


Tempted

by Icebreather



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Rare Pairings, Romance, Sexy, but not really too smutty, j/ellie, lil bit of angst too, lil bit of fighting action later on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:33:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 41,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icebreather/pseuds/Icebreather
Summary: While her relationship with her fiance runs into rough waters, level-headed Ellie Bartowski begins to experience an inexplicable attraction to her blue-eyed neighbor.





	1. Tempted

**Author's Note:**

> Reading some of the Chuck fic on this site motivated me to upload this one of mine, written 2008. Ellie goes from level-headed to mush-headed because John Casey opens a door.

Ellie wasn’t usually one to cuss. Out loud, anyway. She was a woman very much in control of herself, and if any blue language came from between her lips it was usually premeditated. So she stood at the microwave a full ten seconds before putting her hands on her hips and sighing out a ‘dammit’. 

Usually, too, her swear words had a target audience, and this was no less true today. Sure enough, from across the kitchen, Devon turned towards her. He had a huge sandwich in his hand and had to swallow before speaking.

“What’s wrong, babe?”

“The microwave won’t run.” She turned toward him and thrust her thumb over her shoulder. “It’s been acting funny, lately. Can you take a look at it?”

Before speaking, she'd debated just keeping silent and letting the thing sit there, inoperable. She didn't like microwaves, felt they were unhealthy, and had only caved about letting this one into her house when Devon whined about how weird it was to not have one. But now it was here, and if an appliance was going to be in her house, it ought to _work_.

Her fiancé stared at her before setting down his sandwich and walking across the floor. “I’m a doctor, not an electrician,” he reminded her, nevertheless bending over the appliance. Ellie watched him fondly. If she asked something of him he’d always give it a try, even if he didn’t know what he was doing. He had a good heart, Devon did.

And he definitely didn’t know what he was doing. He punched a few buttons, unplugged and re-plugged the cord, and tried to tinker around underneath. Finally, though, he turned to her with a shrug. 

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe you should have Chuck look at it.”

“Chuck’s out of town until Monday,” Ellie returned. Devon nodded; Chuck had mentioned at dinner last night that he and Sarah were going camping this weekend, and indeed, this morning bright and early Sarah had appeared at their door and the two of them had gone off in a vehicle loaded down with all kinds of paraphernalia. Not all of it had looked like camping paraphernalia, but Ellie had never been much of a camper. Neither had Chuck, actually, and Sarah didn’t strike her as the type. Strange.

“You could always ask that scrubby friend of his.” Devon reached for the remainder of his sandwich.

“Morgan? Thanks, but no thanks,” Ellie shook her head. She didn’t feel like dealing with creepy little Morgan on one of her rare Saturdays off, without Chuck around to distract him. 

Devon wolfed the rest of his lunch down. “Try that other one, the big one,” he suggested when he’d finished. “Saw him out this morning, don’t think he’s working today.”

“John Casey?”

“Sure. He lives right next door, try him.” Devon was searching the countertop, swiping his hand around corners. Ellie reached for the keys that were next to the soap dispenser and dropped them into his palm.

“I think Mr. Casey does sales, not service.” Ellie followed Devon into the living room and watched as he stuffed his feet into his shoes.

“So? Guy looks like he’d know his way around a hammer.” Devon straightened up. “Most single men’ll do anything for the pretty girl next door. Just wear a skirt, and when he opens the door widen your eyes, talk softly and look kind of helpless.”

Ellie blinked. “Are you telling me to go over to the neighbor’s house and _flirt_ , Devon?”

He chuckled. “No, I’m just saying be a little feminine. You don’t have to pour it on thick ... he’s one of those knight-in-shining armor guys. You can tell he likes to help out the damsel in distress.”  
  


Ellie rolled her eyes. “I’m not in distress, Devon, except at the idea that you might not mind me flirting with some random guy.”

“I got no worries, babe. I trust you completely. Gotta go, I’ll be late.” He bent to give her cheek a quick kiss and then left.

Ellie stared at the door he closed behind him, frowning. She was a little disgruntled, but wasn’t sure exactly why. Sometimes his breezy, the-world-is-my-oyster attitude just got to her. “Wear a skirt, look helpless, I trust you completely?” she muttered, turning back to the kitchen to clean up the mess he’d made getting their late lunch ready. “Talk softly?” Was he saying her normal speaking tone was harsh or abrasive? “Be a little feminine?” That wasn’t the only comment he’d made lately about her appearance. She looked down at the plain T-shirt and jeans she currently wore. So she didn’t usually run around in frills and lace ... hey, she was a doctor, scrubs were de rigueur; was it so bad to want to throw on a comfortable pair of jeans on her day off? When they went out she dressed up pretty well, thank-you-very-much. It wasn’t her fault that they hadn’t really been out anywhere nice in ... well, awhile. She had to stop and think, actually, about how long it had been.

But by the time she was wiping the counter down, Ellie was feeling a little sheepish about her petulance. It wasn’t Devon’s fault, after all, that their schedules weren’t jiving well lately. Or that they hadn’t had a decent bout of sex in a good while. He was stressing about something, she was sure, though he hadn’t yet opened up to her about whatever it was. She wouldn’t push him, she decided, flinging the cloth into the sink. He’d tell her when he was ready, all in good time. They were just having a bit of a rough patch, that was all. She’d take his advice and run across to ask John Casey for help with the microwave.

She wasn’t going to change into a skirt, though.

* * * * *

Ellie knocked on the door and took a step back, folding her cold hands into one another. Devon’s remarks were making her unaccountably nervous about a silly little thing like asking a neighbor for a favor. A few moments passed before the door opened soundlessly inward. She concentrated on _not_ widening her eyes the least smidgeon, and pasted a friendly but decidedly _not_ flirty smile on her face.

Then the door cleared the person standing behind it, and she lost the smile and her eyes widened way past the flirty stage. _Naked_. That was the only thought in her head ... that he’d come and opened the door naked. 

After her brain had a moment to get un-dazzled, though, she saw that wasn’t precisely true. He did wear a pair of athletic shorts. That was all, though, and they were hard to notice against all that array of skin. Skin and muscle. Lovely, smooth skin and beautifully bulging toned muscle.

She’d never really noticed John Casey in just this way before. She wasn’t sure she’d ever noticed anyone with this intensity before. What he normally wore around her must detract a lot from his assets. She’d briefly noticed his baby-blues and lovely smile when she’d met him, and that had been about it. Well, there was that one time at the Buy-More that she’d been admiring the ass ... ets of an employee bent over a boxed television, and when he’d straightened up and shown himself to be her brother’s friend she’d blushed a little and glanced away before he caught her ogling him.

Right now, though, she felt bushwhacked. Sideswiped. Bulldozed. Those blue eyes seemed electric, somehow, with the skin crinkling around them, and the well-formed lips were gorgeous and ... and moving.

He was talking. What?

“What?”

“What can I do for you?” he asked, speaking a bit slowly and a bit loudly. As though this wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Well, that was what he got for answering the door naked. Nearly naked, anyway.

“Oh ... uh.” She really needed to say something and for the life of her couldn’t think why she was here. “How are you, Mr. Casey?” _Yeah, say something normal._ Maybe it would help if she didn’t glance below his neck.

“You can call me John.”

He’d told her that before, she recalled. “OK, OK sure. I’m Ellie.” _Brilliant, Ellie. That's OK, though, just be normal._ He shifted his stance, folding his arms across his chest, and distracted her. Bad, bad eyes, no looking below the neck!

“Yes, I know.” His voice was devoid of amusement, and his face looked set in stone, but one eyebrow had twitched up and down. He didn’t say anything more. A man of few words, John Casey.

“Right.” She searched desperately for another topic of conversation, and for a way not to stare at the sleek, toned belly showing below his arms. “Been working out?”

He dropped his arms and glanced down at himself. “Yeah, sorry, I’m a little sweaty.”

“No, no, you’re fine. You’re very fine.” _Shut up, shut up, what is wrong with you?_

He squinted at her a little. He was probably confused, and rightly so. She sounded like an idiot.

“Can I help you with something, Ellie?” 

And, that wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question. She mentally thumped herself across the forehead, silently promised she’d do it again later for real, and took a breath, trying to gather her scattered wits. “Yes, actually, I came over to ask a favor.” Her voice had gotten rather breathy. Soft, in fact. She cleared her throat and talked louder. “My microwave seems to be on the fritz. I was wondering if you could take a look at it? That is, if you know anything about appliances.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Guess I could give it a shot. Hang on a sec.” He stepped back into the interior of the house and shut the door.

Ellie turned around and moved some steps away, fulfilling her promise to give her forehead a good thump. Then she did it again, for good measure, and took a couple of deep breaths. What in Hades was wrong with her? She’d never turned into Ms. Head-Full-of-Rocks at the sight of a well-muscled man before! Devon, in point of fact, wasn’t exactly a 90-pound weakling; he was nicely muscled indeed. But she’d never ...

Best not to go there, she decided hastily. The door behind her was opening again. John came through it. He’d pulled on a T-shirt. _Thank God._ She mustered up a smile, and John quirked one corner of his mouth up in return. Shame he didn’t use his beautiful full one, but the half-smile was sexy too.

_Stop that. Just stop._ “Ridiculous.”

John cocked his head at her. “Sorry?”

Damn it, she’d spoken out loud. “Ah, it’s ridiculous. The microwave not working, I mean. It’s only ... eight years old.”

“Eight years is long enough for an appliance to wear out,” he advised her gravely, as though he was informing her of the importance of looking both ways before crossing. “You may want to consider getting a new one.”

“Well, maybe,” Ellie hedged. She had no idea, at the moment, how old the microwave actually was. “Let’s see if anything can be done for it first.” 

They were at her door. She fumbled it open and they stepped inside. She welcomed the coolness of the air conditioning on her heated face.

“Right here,” she gestured, leading the way into the kitchen where the microwave sat on the countertop. “Do you need any tools?”  
  


“Maybe. What’s it doing?” He programmed a few minutes in and hit ‘start’ while Ellie pulled open a cupboard and placed a screwdriver and pliers within his reach.

“That. It does nothing. The display looks like it should be running, but ...” Ellie shrugged. Here in her own house, she was feeling more self-assured, more together. She must have had a momentary attack of insanity at his door, that was all. A brief flare-up of lust, nothing serious. Probably happened to other people all the time.

“What does?”

Damn it, again. She had to get past this new talking-out-loud-by-accident problem.

“Er, microwaves breaking down. Happens to people all the time, right?”  
  


“I ... suppose.” He gave her a puzzled look and upended the microwave. She tried to ignore the very nice bulge of his arms as he did so. She also tried to ignore this new view of his backside. It was an excellent backside, exactly the right size and shape, and parts of her lower anatomy seemed to be liquefying. Ellie licked her lips and sighed. John glanced around and caught her staring at nothing, leaning on a counter while he worked and heaving sighs like she was in some 1940s drama. He was probably thinking Chuck’s sister was a loon. And who could blame him? Maybe she should apologize. _Yeah, right._ What was she going to say? ‘Pardon me, I’m a lot turned on right now’?

“What??” That was John’s voice, and it cracked. He straightened up from the microwave and moved an abrupt step in her direction. Oh, no, please God, no she had _not_ said that out loud ...

“You’re a lot ... what?” His voice was raspy, and he was staring, and there was something dark and hot in his eyes. Her stomach muscles quivered and she had to get out of here. Right now.

“Ex – excuse me,” she squeaked, before whirling on legs that were numb, and dashing from the room.

* * * *

She ended up in the bathroom, not by design, and found herself leaning on the counter over the sink staring sightlessly into the mirror. What had she just done, and how in hell had she done it? Had someone slipped something into her lunchtime coffee? No, that would have to have been Devon, dear dimwitted Devon who trusted her _completely._ He was a stand-up guy who’d never dream of something so underhanded. So it only remained that she had herself to blame. Somehow she and her hormones had gotten herself into this position, and she’d have to get herself out.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, blinking into the mirror, mulling over what she needed to go out and say to John. She just needed to be honest. “I’m experiencing an inexplicable physical attraction” ... all right, so it wasn’t inexplicable, it was completely reasonable given his state of physical fitness. “I’m experiencing an inexplicably intense physical attraction ...” no, better not say that, he’d think he could have her at the snap of his fingers. Which he definitely couldn’t. She was an engaged woman. A _faithful_ engaged woman.

That thought sobered her. She splashed some cool water onto her face and straightened away from the sink, looking herself firmly in the eye. “Go out there and face him,” she told her reflection. “And stop talking to yourself.”

She moved back toward the kitchen with a sense of dread. Maybe he’d gone home, she thought. That’d be nice ... maybe they could just move on and the next time they saw each other from across the street or the yard or the store or the room they could pretend she’d never said what she said. The kitchen was silent as she neared it, and her hopes rose.

But there he was, lovely tapered torso reclining back while his hips rested against her counter. Looking like he belonged there. The room would never be the same for her after this.

She halted across the room from him, not certain what to say. Her gaze halted and stuttered between his and their surroundings, but his didn’t waver. She offered a weak smile.

“It’s running,” he said in reply, gesturing at the microwave that had started all her troubles. “There’s a short in the panel. I did a temporary fix, but you’ll want to replace the panel pretty soon, if you don’t plan to get a new microwave.”

“Thanks,” she responded lamely. When she didn’t say anything else, John levered himself away from the counter and headed out of the kitchen. Toward her. She hastily moved out of his way and followed him to the front door. He paused there a moment, eyed her as though he was about to say something, then apparently thought better of it. He was reaching for the doorknob when she reached for his arm.

She stopped short of touching him, thinking that would be a really bad idea, but he must have seen her movement because he didn’t open the door. Instead he pivoted toward her and looked down, silently. She met his eyes and swallowed. 

“I want to apologize for what I said earlier,” she sighed. He regarded her steadily. “I don’t know what my problem is today, because usually I’m not like this.”

“I know.”

He knew, did he? How, exactly?

“Chuck talks about you. You’re the level-headed one, the adult, the caregiver.”

The caregiver. Ellie’s brows furrowed. She wasn’t sure she liked the sedate and boring sound of that.

“You’re the giver, period,” John added in a lower tone. She wasn’t sure about that statement, either, but more because she wasn’t quite certain what he meant.

“I just want you to know that ... me saying things, like I said back there” - she waved vaguely in the direction of the kitchen – “that won’t happen again.”

He cocked his head, calm and steady as a rock, a sharp contrast to her frayed nerves. That wasn’t fair at all. Then he reached out, gently catching a strand of hair that was curling over her face, and tucking it away slowly. His hand lingered, tracing the curve of her ear with a deliberate motion, and then trailing down the side of her neck lightly but with a scrape of calluses. She swallowed hard. His warm dry fingers paused in the juncture of her neck and shoulder, just over her pulse, so there was no way that he didn’t know how it pounded. He probably knew she was light-headed and about to hyperventilate, too.

She’d been frozen, staring up into his blue blue eyes this whole time, eyes that watched her every move and every reaction to what he was doing. But now she swallowed again, summoned every last drop of will power in her being, and stepped back from him. It felt like scaling a mountain, that step, and he let her go, dropping his hand to his side. She moved her lips and finally got a whisper to pass through them.

“I don’t cheat.” If he hadn’t been standing so close, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

He nodded, once, slowly. “And I don’t poach.” His voice was rough. Now it was his gaze that dropped. He turned his head to the door. After a second he reached for the doorknob. It turned, and he went through, and pulled it shut carefully behind him.

For the second time that day Ellie stood staring at a closed door.


	2. Tried

There was a lot that Devon wasn’t noticing about her lately, Ellie mused. He didn’t sense the underlying tension that guilt brought to her interactions with him Saturday night. He didn’t see through her determinedly cheery smile and the increased frequency of her hand on his shoulder or back all day Sunday. It wasn’t that he was blind or dumb, it was just that at his heart he was an honest person, and he expected the important people in his life to deal as honestly with him as he did them. If Ellie didn’t make it obvious that she wanted to talk about a problem, he wouldn’t pursue it. For today, that was a good thing, because it meant she’d have a chance to regain her equilibrium regarding a certain sexy neighbor whose geographic proximity was suddenly ... disturbing. It meant she’d have time to determine if the sensations she’d felt yesterday were a fluke, or if she needed to invest some serious mental effort in controlling her body’s reaction to John Casey.

Chuck and Sarah came back home Monday afternoon, while Ellie and Devon were both at work. Devon got off before Ellie did, so when she came in through the door late that evening it was to the sight of the three of them gathered on the couch, watching some hokey beach movie and laughing at each other’s sarcastic comments about it. She smiled and waved ‘hello’ on her way past them; as they were too engrossed in ridiculing the movie to pay her much attention, she got a few distracted waves and one ‘hey’ in response.

“Good to see you too, yes my day was fine, thanks for asking,” she muttered as she made her way into the master bedroom. She dropped her bag on the floor with an aggrieved sigh, but only got a few steps away before she had to return and put it in its proper place. She’d had a rough day, and her mood was sour. She acknowledged to herself that keeping away from her loved ones might be a good plan for the rest of the night. “I’m taking a shower and going right to bed,” she called out toward the living room. A variety of disinterested mutters answered her. Rolling her eyes, she pulled out pajamas and entered the bathroom.

The shower helped, but she still didn’t feel like dealing with people tonight. Sometimes just being with others was exhausting. She wasn’t an introvert – she always enjoyed a good party and she welcomed companionship very much – but there were times when the demands of others on her time and attention just got to her. Especially after a long day of ungrateful patients, an incompetent x-ray tech, and a superior who used her as a scapegoat for his own error.

Intruding, distracting thoughts of callused fingers touching her face or the way a particular pair of muscled arms lifted a microwave didn’t rate a mention, not at all. Days like this, it was best just to come home and go to bed. So she did.

********************

John frowned at the screen showing him surveillance of the Intersect’s home, and told himself there were other things he should be doing. All the feed from the hidden cameras was recorded, so that he or Walker could review it if need be. They didn’t typically spend a lot of time just sitting in front of the monitors. He definitely needed to find something else to occupy his time. And in just a few more minutes, he would...

There. She was home. He watched the less-than-enthusiastic greeting Ellie got and narrowed his eyes. One of those morons ought to get up and ask how her day was, or at least make eye contact – didn’t they see the way her shoulders were drooping? But none of them did. And it wasn’t his business, he reminded himself. He was levering his torso to stand and go find something else to do, until he saw that Ellie headed straight into her bedroom.

He smirked as she half-threw her bag on the floor, only to go back two seconds later and gently retrieve it. She couldn’t treat even an inanimate object with disrespect; that fit with what he was coming to know of her. She called something out to the others, and then opened a dresser drawer. He was making to get up and leave the monitors again, but just then she pulled out pajamas and headed into the bathroom. And he sank back down into his chair.

Ellie turned the water on and brushed her teeth at the sink while it warmed. John drummed two fingers on his chair arm. She pulled the band out of her hair with one hand and stood a long moment just staring into the mirror. Her expression wasn’t particularly happy; John’s fingers ceased their movement. Finally, Ellie shook her head and turned away from the mirror. She pulled off her socks and then, in the next second, her scrub top.

John blinked – slowly, not in surprise, because really, what else had he been sitting here expecting her to do after turning on shower water? - and told himself that now it really was time to get up from the chair and leave the monitors alone. But it wasn’t helping that echoing in his head was the sound of her voice from Saturday, all breathy-sounding, saying ... well, never mind what she’d said. It was just making it difficult for him to get out of his seat, when the sight in front of him was of her untying the waist of her scrub pants and efficiently sliding them down a lovely length of leg. And anyway, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen Ellie in the altogether before; there had been over a years’ worth of surveillance footage recorded of that household, by now. But up _until_ now it had only been incidental, glimpses that he hadn’t given any thought to. It came with the job, this seeing people in their private, most intimate moments. It happened quite a lot and wasn’t a big deal – or if it was, you were an agent with a head problem and didn’t belong on the job.

This wasn’t the same as other times, though. Before yesterday, he hadn’t stood in her kitchen and heard her accidentally admit to being physically attracted to him. Before yesterday, he hadn’t known what her hair felt like. He’d certainly never sat and watched ... just for the sake of the watching. The other glimpses of skin he’d gotten had all been excusable because he’d been in pursuit of the bad guys, working for the greater good of the nation. This had no such noble goal. He frowned at the screen. Ellie was down to her underwear and bra, now. She had on plain, sensible, white things. No frills, no lace. The sight was immobilizing anyway. His jaw clenched as he wondered if she had anything black or skimpy or lacy, or all three, away somewhere in one of those dresser drawers. Devon would know; that thought made his lip curl fiercely.

Ellie was reaching around to unclasp her bra. John squinted at the screen, a strange mass of upheaval in his chest, and then with a growl he slammed his eyes shut and shot to his feet just as the straps were falling from her shoulders. Somehow, much as he wanted to see Ellie naked, sitting and seeing her disrobe while she was unaware of him watching was ... cheap, that’s what. Dirty voyeurism. An invasion. It made him the bad guy. He had played that part plenty of times, sure, but only when doing so served the greater good.

This didn’t. His back to the screen now, he ruthlessly tamped down the urge to turn back around and watch her shower. He was hungry. Not necessarily for food, but a sandwich would just have to do.

Later on in his living room, sandwich finished but his hunger uncurbed, John paced around the spartan space with his arms crossed. He was in search of something to occupy his thoughts, anything besides a woman he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want. There was always drinking for times like this, but given his current mood, loading his system up on alcohol seemed imprudent. No, a little discipline was what was needed here.

He passed his little bonsai tree. Unfortunately, it needed no attention. Beside it, his hero, Reagan, smiled benignly out from behind framed glass. John paused, twitched his shoulders uncomfortably, and paced away. The next time around the room, he avoided Reagan’s knowing stare altogether. That didn’t help his discomfort, though. So the third time, he halted his pacing and frowned down at the picture.

“Hey, I didn’t watch! Not for long, anyway.”

Reagan’s answering gaze was unwavering. With a growl, John reached out, picked up the frame, and flipped it around to face the wall. That was better. Reagan could use a little time-out.

He headed across to his chair and the new tactical operations book he’d picked up last week. He hadn’t gotten through half a page, though, before he clapped it shut and got back up.

“Sorry, sir,” he muttered as he turned the photograph back around. He managed a sheepish, reluctant half-smile. Even Reagan had been only human, right?


	3. Enticed

The microwave quit again the next week on a Thursday morning. Ordinarily, this event would have been something rather short of catastrophic. But Ellie stood in front of the nonfunctioning piece of equipment and wondered what vengeful higher power she could possibly have offended. The past two weeks had been ... not great. Devon was becoming increasingly distant, and uninterested in her. Although she’d tried some subtle questioning, Ellie still felt she shouldn’t push him to share until he was ready, and anyway, she had her own issues to deal with. She had been using an inordinate amount of energy to try to control her unexpectedly overactive sex drive, and the universe had conspired against her at every turn.

Last week on Tuesday, John had suddenly decided to take up jogging – or if he’d ever done it before, she hadn’t noticed until now. He’d done warm-up stretches in the courtyard while Ellie happened to be vacuuming near a courtyard-facing window. By the time he finally finished stretching and lunging and generally being catnip-for-women in a Casey-suit, she’d run the vacuum into the wall twice and into an end table once. She’d knocked off a picture frame. 

She kept waiting for the intensity of her reactions to that man to die down, become something manageable. But it hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t understand it. In the past he’d just been the large, sweet neighbor with the eyes and smile. Seeing him in mostly skin had changed that, somehow. He was large, certainly that; heavenly, deliciously, mouth-wateringly large all over. But now she was noticing other things about him, as well. Sweet ... she was rethinking that. Devon was sweet. John did sweet things, but he had something else at his core. Just what, she wasn’t certain yet.

And she was spending way too much time trying to figure him out, when she should instead be getting a handle on herself. This was demonstrated very well on Wednesday afternoon, when she’d been working in a patient room and a nurse walked by in the hallway calling for “Mr. Casey”. Ellie had fumbled the bandage scissors she held and when she stupidly grabbed for them, got a blade cut across her finger. The person the nurse was searching for hadn’t been John Casey, of course; it had been the octogenarian grandfather of a little boy who’d been hit with a baseball. 

It seemed John was haunting her, though, because yesterday evening in the grocery store she had spotted him a ways up the aisle she was turning into. Without taking a moment to think, she whipped her cart around quickly to steer clear of him, only to slam it into a display of large glass bottles of cooking oil. Besides drenching her cart in oil and glass shards, this naturally served to draw the attention of every customer in the store, including the person she wished most to avoid. To her dismay, he abandoned his own cart and came to Ellie’s rescue as a store manager arrived. 

The manager was, to put it mildly, pissed. Ellie stood and tried ineffectually to assure her that yes, certainly she’d pay for every broken bottle. The woman only gesticulated grandly and exclaimed about damages and the people who could have been injured by Ellie’s careless cart-driving. At which point, John interjected an intimidating snarl. That was it, just a curl of his lip in the woman’s general direction. Then he turned away and commandeered Ellie’s cart. But Ellie observed, marveling, that the thoroughly cowed manager seemed unable to say anything more. That was a skill she needed to learn, she thought, as she aimed a weak smile at the manager, who shook her head but moved away to supervise the clean up.

Then Ellie spent the next five minutes trying not to ogle her brother’s friend as he bent and lifted everything salvageable from her dripping cart into his. That man shouldn’t be allowed to wear jeans. And besides his fine thighs and rear, he had good hands, easily avoiding the glass debris and shaking clinging drops of oil from packages. Ellie offered a half-hearted protest at his help, which he negated with a grunt. 

“You get cut?” he tossed at her from where he leaned over their groceries. The tone of voice was off-hand but his eyes, when he looked up, held a shrouded concern. Ellie, befuddled, hadn’t thought to check. Berating herself for her distraction and wrenching her eyes from the cause of it, she did so now quickly.

“No,” she answered. John grunted again - he did that a lot, she observed – and straightened up. He’d been setting a loaf of bread from her cart gently up against the jar of crunchy peanut butter that was his own selection. The bread collapsed softly around the round, hard jar. Her blood pumping faster, Ellie had to swallow and look away from that, with foul words roaming her mind that had never before dared trespass on her intellectual premises. She had to get away from this man. She was getting turned on by _bread_ and _peanut butter_ , for the love of ... there was absolutely no excuse for this. She took a deep breath, then another. She just needed to buy her food and get out of here.

But now he had all her things hostage in his cart, so she had to follow him around while he made his final purchases and she replaced what she’d ruined. She attempted casual conversation, but wasn’t really feeling up to the task, and while polite, John wasn’t really the type for pointless conversation. They finished in silence. On their way to the front of the store, they passed an elderly couple who was as quiet as they were, pushing their cart along in companionable silence.

John and Ellie got into the checkout line together, and with that togetherness image fresh in her mind, Ellie couldn’t help noticing that they looked like just another couple out shopping. Annoyed, because she truly didn’t need thoughts like that, Ellie tried to push them out of her head while she separated her items from John’s. She placed the plastic divider between their purchases with a little more firmness, perhaps, than the action usually called for. John shot her a curious look from under a lowered brow. She ignored it as she paid – paid double for some items, since she had to cover the cost of the ones she’d ruined, which only added to her frustration.

The entire time, however, John hadn’t done or said a thing beyond a few surface pleasantries. Manners personified, that man did nothing to make her uncomfortable except just be there. Unfortunately, that seemed to be all that was required to agitate her. 

All of which was why she now stood staring at the microwave with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth. Two weeks ago she had been determined to figure out, subdue, and if necessary conquer her physical attraction to John Casey. What she had to show for her efforts were a broken picture frame, two stitches on her right index finger, and a credit card bill for forty-three bottles of extra virgin olive oil. And now the microwave had quit again, as he’d warned her it would. She was going to have to get a new one. And she wanted to get it done before her brother found out. 

But the universe being its conspiratorial self, Chuck walked into the dining room as she was unplugging the cursed device from the wall.

“It finally give up the ghost?” he asked. 

Ellie nodded and said nothing, hoping he’d move on. He didn’t. Curse him too.

“Gonna have to go out and get a new one.”

Ellie nodded again, noncommittally, not giving him any reason to think this was anything but a minor issue. But Chuck still didn’t let it go. Instead he fished in his pocket, pulled out a wallet, and removed his Buy More employee discount card. When she saw what he held, Ellie shook her head.

“I think I’ll try Large-Mart,” she admitted to him. And then lied about the reason. “I’ve heard they might have some good prices.”

_Liar, liar, liar!_ her conscience taunted. Ellie knew for a fact that John was working at the Buy More today. And tomorrow. His schedule there was pretty regular. And she just didn’t want to have to deal with the sight of him lifting any heavy boxes. Or bending down to talk to a customer, which he did because he was taller than all of them. Or even just standing as she’d seen him do sometimes. His arms would be folded and his eyes moving about alertly, as though he was a medieval knight on guard duty at the castle’s gate, and the rampaging hordes might attack at any moment. The way she’d been feeling, she’d find that too sexy for words. She might just end up offering to be his maiden in distress.

And there was always that hint of a smirk on his face, as though he knew everything it was important to know, and you didn’t, and he wasn’t telling. She didn’t know what that was about, but somehow, she found it just as enticing as his knight-defending-the-castle pose.

Chuck was giving her a puzzled look. “They’re not going to have any prices that beat my discount,” he said. He shoved the card at her. “I’d pick one up for you myself, but I’m going out of town tonight.”

“You’re doing that a lot lately,” Ellie commented, not taking the card. Maybe she could distract him and still avoid the Buy More.

“Yeah, well, Sarah and I ... we’re working some things out.”

Ellie kept the frown off her face carefully. She still questioned whether that whole Jill thing had truly been resolved, in Chuck’s heart. First loves were so rough on some people.

“I’m glad you’re working it out,” she offered, turning away toward the doorway. But Chuck reached around in front of her to push his discount card into her hand. With a suppressed sigh and a very un-heartfelt thank-you, she took it. She didn’t have an argument that wouldn’t sound crazy. As she walked away from her brother, she briefly pictured telling him the truth. ‘Actually, Chuck, I’ve been drooling over your big man-hunk of a friend ever since I saw him nearly naked, and I’m afraid that too much exposure might cause me to actually try to jump his bones’. Chuck would ... well; she couldn’t quite imagine his reaction to that kind of revelation. But she was sure it would be memorable. 

So that night after work, once she’d heard from Devon that he wasn’t going to be home over the next two days due to a last-minute biking trip with friends, she drove determinedly to the Buy More. Though tempted to linger in the parking lot or skulk in the entranceway trying to scout out John’s location, she wasted no time going in. She’d learned the folly of trying to avoid that man – who was becoming That Man in her head - at the grocery store. It was best to just directly approach him and get it over with.

And there he was, holding his knight’s post by the toasters, just a stone’s throw from the microwaves. He currently faced away from her but there was no way he wouldn’t see her once she entered the microwave aisle. Ellie suppressed a sigh, and a swallow at the sight of his khaki-clad behind, and advanced on his position. _Relax, and be friendly._ Keeping it light, surely that was the key.

“Hey, John,” she called, smiling. He started to turn in her direction. Pleased with the light tone she’d achieved, she continued with a little joke. “Is the castle secure?”

As the words exited her mouth, she realized he wouldn’t have a clue what she was talking about. _Idiot!_ But his head whipped around so fast she was surprised he didn’t sustain a concussion. Narrowed eyes bit into hers like blue lasers. Surprised by the intentness of his expression, Ellie pulled up short. 

He took in her reaction, and she watched with mounting puzzlement as he visibly, almost methodically, relaxed. He unfolded his arms; cocked his head slightly; and quirked one corner of his mouth up. 

“What was that?” he said with ease. Lightly. As though he hadn’t nearly given himself whiplash five seconds ago.

“Ah ... sorry,” Ellie said, befuddled. She was in that state way too frequently in his presence, and it was truly getting old. “A little inside joke, I guess, where I’m the only insider.” Wow, she really did sound as stupid as she had the day she’d knocked on his door to ask for help with her microwave. Which was not an experience she wanted to relive right now. “You just sometimes look ...” _like a knight in shining armor._ “Rather military, the way you, ah, stand so straight and assess your environment.”

He tilted his head a little more. “What was that about a castle?” Casual, very casual. But she still had the impression of an unsheathed sword held ready to strike.

“Hmm.” She was blushing, curse it; her cheeks felt like they were on fire. “You know, knights, castles that need defended ...” she shrugged nervously, and let her voice taper off before she blurted out that hideous knight-in-shining-armor comparison. This was bad enough as it was.

“Hm.” He grunted, and his stance loosened up even more. Watching his shoulders relax, she forced a friendly smile.

“Well, nice seeing you,” _it was_ _a little traumatic but I guess not as bad as it could have been,_ “I’ll get out of your way.”

She moved to edge around him, but damn him, he followed her. “You’re shopping for a microwave?” 

“Yeah, the other one died again, just like you said it would”. _Boost his ego and send him off happy._ She quickened her step. But he kept up. “I’ve got Chuck’s discount card,” she added lamely, as filler for a silence she was certain would be awkward.

They were before the rows of microwaves, now. John showed no signs of leaving. Was he hoping for a commission? She didn’t want to deny him his income, but she’d really rather anyone else help her. Even Morgan. She looked around for someone, but this part of the store seemed to have cleared out. The universe really had it in for her, it seemed. So far she’d been doing relatively well with not letting her inappropriate mental meanderings make it out of her mouth. But she had no guarantee of that presence of mind lasting. 

Insisting on getting another salesperson would seem nuts, though, as well as insulting, and he appeared determined to stay with her. So she would have to let him. She’d just get through this as quickly as possible and get away.

“What are you looking for?” he asked in a professional tone. 

“That one,” Ellie said, pointing at the first item to come into her line of sight. John squinted at it, then her. It was tiny and white, with a confusing array of buttons. 

“Many people are choosing stainless steel right now,” he advised her smoothly.

“Oh ... OK. Does it come in that?”

“No.” He reached out and, horrors, touched her shoulder lightly to guide her a few steps further up the aisle. She felt the heat of his arm all down her side. 

“This one might be a better option,” he gestured, thankfully dropping the hand that had been touching her. She took a deep breath. He kept talking, as though oblivious to what his nearness was doing to her. “It’s more suited to a household that frequently feeds more than one person.” He stood back tranquilly, but not far enough away for Ellie’s peace of mind. After a moment of frustration, she realized she was meant to examine the device. So she made a show of doing so, edging nearer to him and opening the door and inspecting the operating buttons. None of it registered, but she nodded her head mindlessly. When she didn’t say anything, he moved again, once more placing fingers on her arm and leading her to another appliance.

_Please, someone, make him stop touching me._

“This one is a slightly older model, but it has a good track record for reliability. It comes with a three-year limited warranty.” He moved his arm away again; she could breathe again. His voice was even, utterly impersonal. She ought to be thankful for that but found herself increasingly aggravated instead. She wanted to know that she affected him the way he affected her.

When he momentarily turned his back, she shook her head sharply, contradicting herself. No, no she didn’t want that. She wanted him to be utterly unaffected by her, because she certainly didn’t want to have to fight not only her feelings, but his too.

Wait, no, not _feelings_. There were no actual feelings involved here, just hormones. That was it, and she was grateful that he was maintaining a personal distance. Really, she was.

“Mmm,” she said noncommittally when she realized John had been silent for a few seconds and was looking at her expectantly. For those few moments the well-defined edge of his very fine jaw caught Ellie’s eyes, stirring her ...not-feelings.

“What are your feelings?” he asked.

She jumped. “ _What?!_ ” She hadn’t spoken that ‘feelings’ crap out loud, she was almost certain. 

“About this model. What do you think?” He popped its door open, at the same time sending her a look. It wasn’t the puzzled look from the grocery store, though. It held something else entirely, something that clenched her abdominal muscles into tight knots and pulled her pounding heart down into her stomach. _Breathe, breathe, breathe_. 

He finally looked away and she was able to also, toward the turntable that he was demonstrating. She dutifully reached in to see for herself what he was describing. He pulled his hand back at the same time, and they collided.

Just their hands. But his was as warm as she remembered, and hers was suddenly trembling, and instead of moving his away he spread his fingers under hers, steadying their visible vibration. 

“You all right?” His voice was quiet. And no longer quite so smooth.

“No.” No, she wasn’t all right, because her fingers were sinking down in between his. Their palms were meeting. He was wrapping his thumb up over hers. And suddenly they were holding hands. Hers stopped trembling, held firmly by his strength, but that shuddery sensation had migrated to her chest and taken up lodging there. 

“No?” His voice was low and rough. He moved a step closer, too close. His heat warmed her back and she had to firm her spine against what it wanted to do, which was liquefy until she leaned back and pooled all over his muscled chest.

_Devon_ _. Devon, think of Devon_. With an effort, Ellie slid her hand from John’s. His calluses – how did he get those rough areas when he worked in a Buy More? – scraped and sent frissons through her soul. With more effort, she turned to face him, and by the time she did so he’d backed away. Their gazes caught, just for a moment. 

Ellie considered that maybe she should make a doctor’s appointment. A blood test to check her hormone levels might be in order, because a reaction this strong to a man she didn’t know well had to be wrong. She’d been standing in the kitchen appliance section of a Buy More turning to jelly because she was _holding hands._ With a store employee, for pity’s sake!

“I mean, I’m fine.” Ellie gave John a determinedly benign smile. He responded with a frown. She squared her shoulders, anyway, and turned her efforts determinedly to the task at hand. She listened intently to all of John’s advice and followed it to the letter. She decided on an appropriate model. Then she had to bear the sight of him hefting the box to bring it to her.

And she still wasn’t rid of him. Because he carried it to the checkout counter for her. And then he lifted it again and followed her outside into the day’s last, fading light. At her car, she opened a back door and then stood shifting back and forth on her feet behind him while he bent to slide the box onto the bench seat. The movement stretched the material of his khakis wickedly over his deliciously sculpted rear. A nearby streetlight flickered on and highlighted things she was better off not looking at. But she stared anyway, weakly, and wondered what he would do if she just leaned in with both hands and squeezed. She wondered what he would do, explicitly, and what she would do in response, and then how _he_ would respond and how that would feel. If what she was experiencing right now was anything to go by...

Trying to derail that dangerous train of thought, Ellie bit back a groan and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. This was getting so ... just so beyond ridiculous. And worrisome.

And of course, while she had her eyes closed That Man straightened up and turned around and caught her. Caught her visibly struggling to contain her body’s reaction to him; he knew that was what she was doing. She knew he knew because when she dropped her hand from her face, he was standing holding the door tightly, looking at her with those eyes that despite the gathering twilight were still blue blue in her mind. His jaw was flexing and his brow was furrowed, and his gaze was knowing. Wise. He was wise to her.

John moved out of the door’s path and closed it. Every movement was sinister grace. His expression was intent and his eyes held a heat that didn’t do anything to help solidify her spine. The last time he’d closed a door in her presence, it had served as a divider, a safety bar. But closing this one removed barriers. Without anything physically between them, Ellie couldn’t work up the coordination to move her feet and back away from him. But she did manage to fold her arms protectively over her chest and her frantically fluttering heart, only to realize belatedly that she’d unconsciously mirrored his stance.

“Maybe we should talk about this.” Was that her voice? Yep, it was, because he was reacting with a deepened frown. The man didn’t have a lot of happy facial expressions, she noted, and wondered what the cause of that was.

None of her business. And off-point. She was talking out loud about her intense attraction to him, again! So embarrassing. But his face was the most open she’d ever seen it, and seemed to be saying that his insides were doing the same thing that hers were.

“Don’t see that there’s much to talk about,” was his contribution. How like a man. But his tone was rough, even harsh, and so she knew that he wasn’t brushing her off. He was just voicing what he viewed as their lack of options. Ellie acknowledged with a small nod that he was right. She wasn’t going to break up with Devon, and she wasn’t going to cheat on him, either. She just wasn’t. And John, by his own admission, didn’t steal other men’s girlfriends. Or fianceés.

Which was all very good and admirable and left them both in a difficult place. 

“Well, maybe we should talk about how we’re going to not ... not ... you know.” she waved her hand helplessly.

He didn’t fill the words in for her, didn’t say anything at all. He just pressed his lips together while wrinkling the upper one, an expression which conveyed as much frustration as she was feeling as well as affirmation that he knew exactly what she was talking about. She was relieved to have him acknowledge it but wound tighter at the confirmation that it wasn’t only her own, oh just admit it, _feelings_ that needed to be controlled here. It was his too.

“Maybe I’ll ask for a few days off,” John mused, staring over her shoulder to where the last colors of the sunset were fading away. “I’ll go clear my head.” He shrugged. “Maybe find a woman. Something. Get straightened out before I come back.”

_Find a woman._ Something inside Ellie reared its head to roar protest at that thought, and she fiercely stomped on whatever that thing was. It was a good idea he had. An excellent idea.

“And maybe I should take Devon out for a romantic weekend. Rekindle things.” Lovely, now she’d admitted out loud that rekindling was needed. Oh, well, how much worse could things really get?

“OK.” John nodded crisply.

“OK.” So apparently they’d decided. They were going to use other people to distract themselves from each other.

Well, that sounded like they were doing something wrong, when they were both trying very hard to do the right thing.

“It’s the right thing,” she said aloud, somewhat desperately.

“Yeah.” He stood a silent moment longer, his hands shoved into his pockets. Then he nodded again, sharply, and swung around and marched back to the brightly lit store. Ellie refused to let herself watch him go. She got into the car, turned the key in the ignition, and drove away.


	4. Frustrated

Ellie sat the bowl of mashed potatoes down and surveyed the table’s other contents before sitting down as well. It was dinner time, Devon and Chuck were both there, and even Sarah, who she hadn’t seen much of lately, had joined them. She and Chuck seemed to have fixed whatever difficulty they’d been having. Devon was present for dinner, for once. The day at the hospital had gone fairly smoothly. Ellie should be happy and content.

But she wasn’t. Devon still, in the past month, hadn’t opened up to her and had brushed her off with a smile and a quick peck on the cheek when she asked him what was wrong. She had fought against the feeling that he was somehow slipping out of her life. But she had passed the worried stage, by now, and was working up to plain and simple resentment. Almost two months had gone by during which he hadn’t been very interested in sex, or her in general. He’d also managed to be gone whenever she had time off. The sheer number of times this had happened made Ellie rule out coincidence. She was tired of making excuses for him.

And there were still these internal issues she was having over That Man. After their brief but surreally momentous conversation in the Buy More parking lot, he must have had difficulty getting time off from work, because he’d still been around. Aggravatingly, arousingly around. Since yesterday, though, she hadn’t seen him, so he must have managed it. This hadn’t, unfortunately, done anything to make her less grumpy.

“Haven’t seen your friend Casey around, lately,” Devon chose that moment to comment. Ellie stopped herself – just barely - from shooting him a suspicious look. Of course he hadn’t been eavesdropping on her thoughts! But lately, everything he said sounded like an evasion of the real subject - that being whatever he was dealing with that he wasn’t sharing with her.

Chuck blinked, and for some reason shot a quick glance at Sarah before he replied. 

“Yeah, Casey ... took a few days off.” 

Sarah complacently took a bite of green beans, but there was something about Chuck’s glance at her that struck Ellie as odd. Those looks happened kind of frequently, between any two of those three: John, Chuck, and Sarah. It made Ellie wonder sometimes.

Chuck shook his head. “Something’s been off with him lately.”

That comment got Sarah’s attention (as well as Ellie’s), though she picked up her water glass and took a swallow before questioning her boyfriend. “What do you mean?”

Chuck shrugged. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he has woman troubles.” His eyes met Sarah’s, and they shared a smile over something the rest of the table wasn’t privy to. Ellie frowned. That was just rude. And no, her annoyance did not have anything to do with wanting the details of whatever Sarah and Chuck knew about John that she didn’t. Nope. Nothing whatsoever to do with that.

Sarah smiled blandly at Chuck’s statement. That girl did a lot of bland smiling, Ellie reflected as she took a long drink from her wine glass. Then Sarah shook her head, and her expression became amused.

“I don’t know what kind of woman would go for a guy like Casey,” she told Chuck.

Ellie’s eyes narrowed to slits. She felt it happen, and without a look toward Devon forced them back to neutral with an effort. She could tell that perky little blonde _exactly_ what kind of woman would go for a guy like Casey. 

She could, but she wouldn’t.

Devon thought he had it figured out, though. “He’s the kind of guy who likes the helpless type,” he contributed, grinning. “Somebody who wants a big, strong guy around to get rid of the spiders and order her meals.”

Ellie shot him a disbelieving look. Was he for real? How more off-base could he get? And he wasn’t done. He picked his water glass up with an air of authority that grated over her nerves, and nodded superiorly at Chuck and Sara.

“And its women just like that who like guys like him back.”

Oh, that was enough.

“Since when are you the expert on attraction, or anything else to do with sex?” Ellie spat the words out before she thought them through. From the paused postures around the table, a lot of the annoyance she was feeling with her fiancé had seeped into her voice. All right, it wasn’t annoyance; it was straight-up anger.

She shook her head, and attempted to dial it down a little.

“I, ah, just mean ... not all big, strong men like little needy women.” Her frustration began to rise again in spite of herself. For an intelligent and educated man, how dense could Devon be? “Sometimes a half-way intelligent, _real_ man comes along who actually wants to be with a woman who’s resourceful, who pulls her own weight, and who can stand up for herself.” The volume of her voice was rising. She pressed her lips together and tried to reign in all that frustration she heard spilling out, but wasn’t successful. Devon had ducked his head and was shoveling roast into his mouth. Sarah was looking to Chuck for guidance, and Chuck had his head tipped to the side while he gazed at his sister in confusion.

Ellie heard the words she’d just spoken echo in her head, looked at Devon’s chipmunk cheeks as he tried to swallow all the food he’d put in there, and had a revelation. She, herself, was as far from the ‘little needy woman’ as she could get. And Devon - God bless him, Devon who _needed_ a woman to manage him more than any man she’d ever met – he’d somehow decided he wanted a clingy type. Someone to depend on him.

She tried to picture that. She failed. Devon just wouldn’t be able to make it on his own, much less if he had someone else to steer through life. The very thought was ridiculous. Where had he come up with this? As she thought back over the past few months, though, her suspicion was confirmed. All his little comments about being ‘soft’ and ‘feminine’, his inciting her to use feminine wiles on John Casey (of all men, he’d picked That Man), even his wanting her to wear a dress every so often ... he was trying to make her into something she couldn’t be – emotionally dependent.

She had been staring sightlessly off at a wall, she realized, when Chuck leaned over the table to wave his hand in front of her face. She started, and tracked on her brother’s earnest expression.

“You OK there, El?” He asked with concern. 

Ellie looked at him, another hapless male who had let a woman screw him up and only seemed to be getting his life back on track due to _another_ woman, and she pushed her plate away. What was it with the men in her life? Did she turn them into these adult-size children?

“Men,” she said, turning her head to Sarah, because she just didn’t want to talk to a member of the opposite gender right now. And scraping her chair back, she stood, leaving a tableful of surprised people. Behind her, she heard Chuck’s confused “What ...?” 

She left the room, too. And then the house.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

John Casey’s windows were dark, and his vehicle was gone. It was a good thing, Ellie told herself. Otherwise, in her state of mind, she’d have gone right over there and tried to use him to prove to herself that there were grown men, mature men, responsible men who could survive on their own, and yet still desire an independent woman like herself. That would have been a big mistake, unworthy of her and disrespectful of him. Instead, she paced around a couple of times, and then when the door of her house cracked open and Devon stood silhouetted in its frame, she left the courtyard. She didn’t want to talk yet.

She did a circuit of the block, and then the neighborhood. The nights were cooling off a bit as summer came to a close, and the clear air helped to clear her head. After a couple of hours, she felt ready to go back and face the music.

Chuck and Sarah had cleared out when she re-entered the house. Devon sat on the couch, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. He’d been drumming both his hands on his foot; he stopped abruptly when she opened the door. He got to his feet quickly, and approached her with his hands out. She let him kiss her cheek, and ask her how she was.

“I’m all right, Devon.” She wasn’t going to apologize. “I’m just getting really tired of you hiding whatever it is you’re hiding from me.” There. He had a chance to tell her, once and for all, that he wanted her to be something she wasn’t. She was giving him an opportunity to be honest.

He didn’t take it.

“I’ve been a little preoccupied, I know,” he admitted, hanging his head and giving her a sheepish look. “I didn’t mean to take any of my problems out on you. There’s some stuff at work ... but I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Maybe later, OK?”

Ellie stared at him resignedly. Stuff at work? What could possibly be going on there that she, who worked at the same hospital, wouldn’t understand? He was giving her the run-around. But she couldn’t force him to share. And she was tired.

“All right, Devon,” she sighed. “But this is becoming a big issue between us. I’m not going to wait forever.”

He swallowed. Then he nodded. And they went to bed.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * ** ******

John Casey came back home the next week. It was both a relief and a torture. A relief, because she’d spent much of the time he was gone fighting off mental pictures of him doing what he’d said he might do – find a woman. People in her surroundings spurred these images at the oddest moments. If she worked with the extremely well-endowed E.R. nurse who was charge on afternoon shifts, she wondered if that was the type he’d picked. Or maybe it would be the teeny, twiggy little barista at the coffee joint where she usually stopped on the way to work. Or would her friend Magritte, a nearly six-foot-tall Nordic type without an ounce of body fat anywhere, appeal to him?

She tried talking herself out of what had become an obsession. She had a handsome (if sometimes vacant-headed), smart (if naïve), fit (if sporadically jock-ish), sweet (if frequently adolescent) man who was a successful doctor. John Casey, a man with apparently no ambition whatsoever given his job, shouldn’t be such a draw for her. Her own brother, whose lack of direction she deplored, had a higher-level job than That Man, and was probably ten years younger. 

But her brain wouldn’t obey her attempts not to think about him.

So it was a relief to look out her window as she was pulling her hair into a ponytail Wednesday morning and see that his vehicle was parked out there. He must have gotten home last night. And then it was torture, because his door opened and he walked out. And despite the fact that he wore an ugly Buy More shirt and a facial expression that she could only describe as sullen, all her thoughts about his lack of ambition went right out the window. Because That Man was just that ... all man. 

She told herself that she hoped he’d worked out all of his sexual urges in the past week. She told herself that if he didn’t desire her, her life would be that much easier. She told herself that they would be able to return to being relaxed, friendly acquaintances. She’d worked herself up to half-believing these lies when he paused in his walking, almost as though he felt her eyes on him. He stood still for half a second and then his eyes moved unerringly to her window. Though she stood at an angle inside a darkened room that he shouldn’t be able see into, Ellie shrank back against the nearest wall. He started walking again, but his eyes moved from her house in a slow assessing circle, scanning his surroundings. He _had_ sensed her. What was he, psychic? His right hand had gone to the back of his waistband, and was holding something under there. It almost looked as if he had a gun, which was laughable. What would he be doing carrying a gun to his salesman job?

Still, he looked tensed to handle a threat. And as he opened his car door, he shot her house one last look. Ellie stayed indoors until he was gone, despite her arguments with herself.

At work that day, nothing was much different than it had been for the past months. She did rounds and was half-way successful at concentrating on what she needed to concentrate on. She had time for a lunch break, though, which was bad news, because without work to occupy her mind it was John who did. Even with Magritte sitting across from her, telling a lively tale about her recent weekend home to see her parents, it was John staring around the courtyard that morning that held her thoughts.

“You in there?” her friend wanted to know, leaning forward to catch Ellie’s wayward gaze. 

“Yes. Yes, sorry, I’m just a little distracted.” 

Magritte nodded. “You’ve been that way a lot lately. Something going on with Devon?”

Ellie tapped her coffee cup, looking at her friend and debating whether to tell her the whole miserable story. _Devon’s making himself so scarce I’m forgetting what he looks like, and I really need to get my sexy neighbor off ...hmm. Uh, where was that going? My mind. I'm out of my mind? Yes, but that wasn't ..._ ** _Off_** _my mind._ _I was thinking that I need to get John Casey off my mind._  
  
So, yeah ... obviously spilling to Magritte exactly what was going on inside her head right now was a really bad idea. Or at least potentially extremely embarrassing.

“I’m fine. So your mother’s a pimp now, huh?”

Magritte coughed, choking on a surprised laugh. After she wiped her eyes, she rolled them. “I sure felt like she was pimping me. She must have paraded me in front of half-a-dozen guys, all in two days. Why can’t she accept the fact that someone can be straight, single, in their thirties, and happy?”

Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s what moms are like when they have single, thirty-something daughters, I guess.” Not that Ellie would know. She regarded her friend assessingly. Magritte was striking, fun, and successful. She liked men. Why wasn’t she with one?

“Do you want to get married at some point?”

Magritte shrugged. “Maybe. My tastes are kind of unique, though. I like the strong, silent type, you know? The big muscled kind that can handle most things without a fuss. Who’s a little less interested in his career than he is in me. Somebody who can make me shiver just by looking at me. Not a lot of those in this town.” She waved a hand around the hospital cafeteria, disparagingly. Ellie followed her gaze, ticking off the men within view. Stringy and whiny-looking. Cute but metrosexual. Loud jock. Fit but taken. Not one of them matched Margrite’s ‘type’.

Ellie knew one man who did, though. Make you shiver just by looking at you, indeed. She stared at her gorgeous, single friend and had a brilliant idea.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  


“This is a terrible idea.” Chuck’s voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes were intense. Maybe even a little worried. Which was absurd, because Ellie felt strongly that this was a very good idea. An excellent idea. Maybe the idea of the century.

“Why not?” She challenged.

Chuck scratched his head. “Uh, Ellie ... I can’t really explain it. But just take my word for it, Casey isn’t going to compromise ... uh, he’s not going to be interested in anyone you set him up with. He’s got, um, other priorities.”

“’Other priorities’? Really, Chuck.” Ellie laughed. “Women are pretty high on every single straight guy’s list. Have you had a girlfriend so long that you’ve forgotten?”

Chuck shook his head, and continued to object. But he finally caved in and agreed to invite Casey to dinner the next evening. And Ellie called up Devon, who was out somewhere doing God only knew what (he hadn’t seen fit to inform her), and told him that he _would_ be present at dinner tomorrow night. If he wasn’t, they’d be redefining their relationship. It was time to force him into truthfulness. Way past time, in fact.


	5. Scared

Chuck sent his last customer on his way with a smile and started closing things up at the Nerd Herd desk. He’d spent much of the day trying to figure out if he should just invite Casey over for dinner with no explanation, or fill him in on the fact that Ellie wanted to set him up with a friend of hers. On the one hand, if he told him, he was sure Casey would refuse the invitation and Ellie would be pissed. On the other, if he didn’t tell him and Casey was ambushed by two scheming women, Chuck was certain Casey would be the one who was pissed. 

Ellie’s anger or Casey’s. It wasn’t really a dilemma at all, was it? Chuck left the desk and approached the other man. 

“Hey, Casey,” he said, easing into things with a casual smile. “Any plans for tomorrow night?”

“Besides babysitting you and Morgan while you dissect the latest Battlestar episode? No.” Casey had a pallet full of surround-sound systems that he was stocking. He didn’t turn from the job, just tossed the disgusted words over his shoulder. 

“OK, then.” Chuck shoved his hands into his pockets. “In the mood for a home-cooked meal?”

Hah, that got his attention. Casey paused in the act of shoving boxes onto shelves.

“At your house?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, where else?” Chuck laughed. 

Casey started lifting boxes again. “I’ll have to skip this one.”

“Really? You’re going to pass on the offer of my sister’s fine cooking?” That was a first, that Chuck could recall. Though thankfully there had only been a few occasions where he’d been forced to be friendly with Casey at his own dinner table.

Something must have caught Casey’s attention again, because he’d stopped stocking once more. “This your invitation, or your sister’s?” He wanted to know.

He must have known something was up. How did he figure these things out? That was why the guy was a spy, Chuck supposed.

“Does it matter?” he tried, with a nervous grin. “It’s a free, home-made meal.”

Now Casey turned around, folding his arms and putting on his scary face. The one where he actually put some effort into amping the intimidation, as opposed to his baseline threat level, which was already plenty high enough.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Well.” Chuck’s grin grew weak, but he hung onto it. Whatever they said about him, he had bravado, if nothing else! “Ellie’s having a friend of hers over. You never know, it might be nice, Ellie and Devon, me and Sarah ... you and, uh, Magritte ...” his voice trailed off to the accompaniment of Casey’s lowering brows. The other man took a step in his direction. Chuck held his ground, just barely.

“Are you trying to hook me up? Chuck?” Casey punched the words out with deliberation, as though they were striking an opponent. And they found their mark, because Chuck flinched.

“No, no, not me!” he exclaimed hastily, raising his hands and unhesitatingly throwing his sister to the wolves. Well, wolf. “It’s Ellie! She has a friend from work she wants you to meet. That’s all. Not a big deal, really.” He watched Casey’s angry face, knowing this would never happen. There was no way in hell that Major John Casey was going to allow himself to be set up on some kind of blind date with two other couples present - much less when Chuck and Sarah were one of those ‘couples’. 

Said Major’s face looked as though it had frozen in a snarl. While Chuck watched, though, the skin around the nose began to wrinkle in what looked suspiciously like laugh lines. The snarl slowly transformed into a smirk, and the eyes took on what Chuck could only term as an unholy gleam. To tell the truth, this was even more terrifying than the snarl had been. Now Chuck did take a step back. 

“Thinks settin’ me up’s gonna work, does she?” Casey mused, seemingly to himself but out loud. And then he emitted a horrifying sound; a chuckle. "Must be getting desperate.” His eyes abruptly lost their middle-distance haze and zeroed in on Chuck, who felt caught in the sights of a sniper rifle. 

“Tell your sister I’ll be there, Chuck. This is gonna be _interesting_.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“I’m telling you, I was terrified,” Chuck insisted, sitting across an Orange Orange table from Sarah while she laughed. “He’s got something planned. I don’t know what, or why, but it has something to do with Ellie. And I’m worried.”

Sarah pulled her hand away from her mouth, controlled her laughter enough to take a deep breath, and shook her head. “If I weren’t invited, I’d be crashing,” she stated. “Just to watch Casey while your sister tries to set him up.”

“Are you listening to me?” Chuck demanded. “I’m worried about this. It was _twisted_ , the way he laughed, Sarah.”

“Chuck.” Sarah leaned forward. “What could he possibly have in mind? He’s a professional. He’s not going to do anything to compromise our cover. He’ll play the mannerly, if reserved, houseguest, as long as no one touches him. Just like he’s done before. Relax! This is going to be fun.”

Chuck shook his head, unconvinced. “You didn’t see his face. I’ve never seen that look on him before, Sarah. Maybe you should bring your gun. Just in case.”

Sarah’s face composed itself in a hurry. “I always carry my gun in your house, Chuck.”


	6. Stymied

Ellie arrived home early in the evening with a couple of hours to get ready for her dinner guests. With an excitement that she realized had been lacking in her life lately, she turned the stove on for pre-heating and began to grab ingredients. This was going to be a fabulous dinner, she enthused to herself as she checked the pork that had been in a crockpot all day. Casey would fall head-over-heels for Magritte – what man wouldn’t? – and Ellie would talk to Devon and get things straightened out once and for all. And that should raise enough barriers between them; That Man would be dating her friend, she herself would be engaged, and her issues with Devon would be resolved. Surely all of that together would work to let her mind finally take control of her body and force it to behave. Surely.

“This is going to work,” she whispered confidently to herself as she popped into the oven the bread that had risen overnight. 

A few minutes before seven, the doorbell rang and Ellie answered it, as no one else had arrived yet. Magritte entered, dressed to kill and carrying a bottle of wine. Ellie put it to chill while Magritte leaned on the counter.

“So tell me again about this guy,” she demanded while Ellie went back to work. 

“I told you he works at the Buy More, right?” Ellie responded. Magritte nodded while she adjusted the skimpy top she wore. It made the most it possibly could of her smallish amount of cleavage. “So his career definitely won’t take precedence over you,” Ellie smiled over her shoulder. Secretly, his job was the main thing Ellie kept reminding herself of when she tried to add to the ‘con’ side of her pro/con list regarding John Casey. Magritte, however, seemed taken with the idea that she’d be his number one priority, and nodded.

“He’s kind of quiet, so he won’t spend all your dates talking about himself. But he’s very sweet. I get the idea he’s pretty conservative, but you know those traditional guys.” Ellie straightened from the stove top. “Underneath, they’re tigers.”

“Huh.” Magritte looked unconvinced about that. “I’m not so sure. Sometimes stuffy is just stuffy, all the way down.”

‘Stuffy’ was definitely not how Ellie would choose to describe John. A tall dark hunk of wickedness that made her want to play with fire? Oh, yeah. Stuffy ... no.

“Uh, I need to change,” she said hastily. “Pull that out of the oven when the timer dings, will you?”

Magritte nodded, and Ellie escaped to her bedroom. She’d laid out a conservative grey sweater and pants to wear. She looked at the ensemble now and wrinkled her nose, comparing it to the gauzy, midriff-baring blouse and low-slung, clingy black pants her friend sported back in the kitchen. Ellie was going to look like used dishwater next to Magritte.

“That’s the point,” she told herself firmly. And pulled the outfit on. She’d done her hair and makeup before she started on the food, and refusing to allow herself more than one quick check in the mirror, she went out to set the table. 

The doorbell rang as she was finishing, and it was John because Devon or Chuck would have just walked in. Her pulse skittered a bit and she took a deep breath, trying sternly to control it.

“He’s here,” she said to Magritte, and grabbed her friend’s hand to pull her along to the door. Magritte’s protest at this treatment died as the door opened and John Casey stepped through.

“Whoa,” Ellie heard Magritte murmur behind her, and fully echoed the sentiment in her mind, though it didn’t, thankfully, make it out her frozen lips. She’d seen John Casey in a suit before; had she been blind then? If so, she was making up for it now; she had difficulty tearing her eyes from him. His broad shoulders filled the classic fit of the charcoal-grey suit perfectly. The light sapphire of his shirt and darker marine of his tie picked up the blue of his eyes and turned them into devastating shards of sky. The pants fell flawlessly down his muscled legs. 

What was he trying to do, kill her? Ellie resorted to closing her eyes briefly before opening them wide and pasting a hospitable smile on her face.

“John, it’s so nice that you could come,” she managed. Proud of herself, she moved to take the flowers he offered her. “Thank you, these are lovely.” She backed up to clear his view of her friend. “This is Dr. Magritte Gunnarsson. We work together.” She left them standing there to fend for themselves, using water for the flowers as an excuse to get away. 

From the kitchen, she tried to covertly observe her two targets. John and Magritte had shaken hands. What was going on right at that minute, Ellie wasn’t certain; Magritte was standing still with a polite-but-puzzled expression while John walked in a circle around her. He was ... well, he was looking her up and down, assessingly. And when he stopped, facing her again, he gave a nod of approval. A rather obnoxious nod of approval, with his eyebrows raised suggestively.

How odd. Ellie had never seen him do such a thing before; he just had more polish than that, ordinarily. This was not making the best first impression. Magritte cast a questioning look toward the kitchen, and Ellie responded, calling her friend to come help arrange place settings.

Happily, Devon, Chuck and Sarah all arrived in short order. Devon and Chuck changed into evening attire while Ellie busied herself putting out the food and Sarah chatted with John and Magritte. Finally called to the table, everyone settled in with cheerful airs, even Devon and John. Ellie had placed herself and her fiancé at the ends of the table, and Magritte beside Ellie because she didn’t know anyone else there. To give John and Magritte the best ease of conversation, she’d put him across from Magritte. This also allowed her to manipulate – pardon, _guide_ – their interactions. Unfortunately, it also meant that John was in the chair to Ellie’s left, within easy touching distance. She told herself sternly, though, that she could handle his nearness. She just needed to get his attention focused on her friend.

“Magritte and I were in med school together,” she informed John as dishes were being passed. “And then we both got positions where we are now, which was nice. Tell John about yourself, Magritte.”

Magritte smiled at the handsome man across from her. But before she could open her mouth, John opened his own.

“That’s a really great blouse,” he told her. He was smiling more widely than Ellie had ever seen him do, which might have been gratifying if he’d only been staring into her friend’s eyes. He wasn’t. Instead, his eyes were trained on the cleavage that was generously revealed by the article of clothing he was talking about.

“Thanks,” Magritte smiled again, cool and poised. She was rather accustomed to guys ogling her.

“Thank- _you,_ ” John answered, his tone heavy with meaning. 

Well. Ellie took a drink of her wine. John continued to stare at Magritte’s chest, and his expression had turned into an outright leer. After a few moments even Magritte shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

This was a side of him Ellie had never seen before, a rather unattractive one. She supposed she’d never really seen him around other women before, except Sarah. But her brother was friends with the guy; he was usually a decent judge of character. Since Stanford, anyway. Ellie purposed to talk to him later, but then nixed that idea when she saw Chuck’s expression. His brow was furrowed in Casey’s direction, and he seemed worried.

OK, moving on. Maybe John was just ... blown away by Magritte’s beauty. Sure, that had to be it.

“Magritte is a doctor, but she also has some interesting hobbies,” Ellie enthused. “She’s a flight instructor.”

John nodded his chin once, politely, but said nothing. At least he was looking at his food now – or he did until Magritte smiled at him yet again, the special sweet-but-sexy look that Ellie knew for a fact had been practiced in front of a mirror. Obviously her friend had gotten over the discomfort his staring had caused. Now, however, he was back to the leering. Ellie didn’t understand it; this just wasn’t the John she thought she knew.

The butter was passed to him, and after plopping a generous amount onto his warm slice of bread John held it out to Ellie. She took it, trying to avoid his hand as she had with the other dishes that had been passed. She must have fumbled the maneuver somehow, because before he lifted his hand away his fingers slid across hers. Sparks jumped along her nerve endings. Ellie contained her shiver with an effort. 

Well, that was just pathetic – here he was behaving like a lecherous old man and she was still struggling not to drool over him. How sad.

“Have you ever been up in a small plane?” Magritte asked John. “It’s such a rush, especially if you’re the one at the controls.”

John shook his head. “Nope,” he stated. “I’m anti-airplane. Especially small ones.”

Down the table, Ellie saw Sarah’s head lift. Magritte’s face looked puzzled, as well it might. 

“I’m sorry,” she asked, seeking clarification, “you’re anti-plane? Does that mean you have a fear of flying?”

“No,” John answered. “It means I have a moral imperative not to waste this planet’s precious resources with silly little pleasure-jaunts that serve no purpose except to, as you put it, give someone a rush.”

Chuck and Sarah exchanged silent glances while Magritte sat her wine glass down with a thump. Ellie didn’t need to see her face to know its expression, because it said exactly what Ellie was thinking; _what the hell?_

In over two years of knowing him, Ellie had never got the impression that John was any kind of environmentalist, much less the type militant enough to attack someone over dinner for their un-green activities. Come to think of it, not too long ago he’d driven an older-model Crown Victoria; that thing probably got something like ten miles per gallon.

“I ... see,” Magritte said, and there was quiet for a few moments. Ellie slid John a sideways glance. He was tucking into his food, his expression bland. There was no way he didn’t know his little rant had gone over like a wet balloon, Ellie reflected. It was almost as if he was doing these odd things deliberately.

A change of subject was definitely called for.

“How was work, sweetie?” Ellie asked Devon, the first words between them that had been spoken since he arrived home. He looked up from his food to smile vaguely down toward her (though not at her).

“Fine, no problems,” he said cheerily. And went back to his food.

_Thanks, Devon, that was so helpful_. Silence again.

“Chuck?” Ellie asked desperately. He grinned over at her, sensing her anxiety.

“Work was interesting,” he provided. “We got a whole shipment of blenders that were damaged. Casey was stocking the first ones and kept hearing tinkling sounds, broken stuff shifting around inside the boxes, you know, so he opened one. And then Big Mike was on the phone forever because the company didn’t want to accept return shipment; they said something must have happened in transit that they weren’t responsible for.”

OK, so what passed for interesting at the Buy More wasn’t the most scintillating dinner-table conversation. Ellie turned her eyes to Sarah, thought, _yogurt shop_ , and groaned.

Maybe John saw that she was struggling. He made a contribution to the foundering conversation.

“Yeah, that was really obnoxious. I had to stay after an extra thirty minutes. Believe me, the Buy More isn’t a place I want to hang around any more than I have to.”

Margritte eyed him warily. Which was to be expected, after their last interaction. “Why do you stay in that job, if you dislike it so much?”

John shrugged. “It’s pretty much a loser job, yeah, but it’s too much work to try to find something else.”

Now he was a guy with a ‘loser job’ who was too lazy to look for something better? Ellie couldn’t understand what was happening here, but this was really not how she’d imagined the evening going. Valiantly, though, she gave it another effort.

“What about you, Magritte? I didn’t see you today. Anything interesting?”

“Sure,” Magritte answered agreeably. “Life in pediatrics is always interesting. Today a little girl with leukemia, who’s in the foster care system, asked to come home with me. That was sad, of course, but it felt good to know I’d made that much of a positive impact in her life.”

Ellie cheered inwardly. She raised an eyebrow at John, to communicate _see what a great person she is? She likes children, and they like her back. Even sick ones. Isn’t that sweet?_

But John was shaking his head. “And you didn’t set her straight?” he asked in an aggressive tone. “Kids in the system have to learn early on that they’re stuck with what they’ve got. Raising false hopes like that, it’s cruel.”

Now unable to contain her frown, Ellie saw Sarah set her knife into her pork with more force than necessary. She remembered Chuck saying something in the past about his girlfriend not having the greatest childhood. Had she spent some time in foster care?

Magritte was staring at John with a puzzled expression, and Ellie felt the same. First he’d painted her friend as a selfish Earth-hater, and now as an unfeeling taunter of children. What was wrong with him?

Then Magritte looked down at her plate, and John’s eyes slid sideways toward Ellie’s and he winked at her. _Winked_. Audaciously, smugly, infuriatingly.

And she knew what he was doing. He was purposely sabotaging her plans! Why would he do that? Didn’t he see how this would help them both?

“I myself,” That Man proclaimed, stabbing his fork into the salad in front of him, “think we seriously need to consider a one-child policy in this country. Mandatory sterilization might be a really good thing, too. All kinds of people who should never be parents are churning out kids left and right, and they just take up space and resources the rest of us need.”

“What?!” Chuck had been keeping it together until this point, but he couldn’t keep that exclamation back, and Ellie didn’t blame him. Mandatory sterilization – wow, where had he come up with that one? Devon let out a gurgle of surprise, and Magritte just stared. Ellie’s lips firmed together in exasperation. OK, so John might not agree with what she was doing, but this seemed a little extreme. Couldn’t he have just expressed polite disinterest?

She shifted in her chair, and a second later felt a knee against hers. A big blocky male knee. And after that, a shin, also big and male. Urk. Despite her annoyance with him, the contact was electric. She jerked her leg away. John’s face was impassive. 

That had not been an accident. Ellie gritted her teeth.

“You’re a doctor. You gotta agree with me, right Woodcomb?” John was drawing her fiancé into the disaster of a conversation. Well, maybe Devon could rescue it. She aimed a pleading, hopefully subtle, expression at him. She was apparently too successful with the subtlety: he didn’t see her look, but he did try to smooth things over in his usual manner.

“I’m not the only doctor here,” he pointed out, quite sensibly, and in a single sentence tripling the number of words he’d contributed to the conversation since they had all seated themselves.

John shrugged. “They’re women.” He waved his fork around with a pompous air. “They don’t count.”

At this blatant arrogance, Sarah and Chuck exchanged glances again. Ellie observed them with deep suspicion. Her exasperation was starting to boil over into wrath. Oh, when she got either of those two alone ... Chuck appeared distressed, but Sarah seemed, incredibly enough, amused. She picked up her knife with an intent expression and began to saw, that was the only word for it, at her meat. The loud scraping sound as the blade hit the ceramic plate made Ellie wince. The blonde paid studious attention to using her fork and putting the piece of meat into her mouth, as if she needed to occupy it, or she’d be saying something she might later regret.

“Can’t say I do agree with you,” Devon was continuing, “but to each his own, buddy.” He must be on a role; that was his third whole sentence.

“How many kids are you and Ellie planning on having?” John asked, in an abrupt change of subject. Ellie was swallowing, and coughed a little as the bite lodged in her throat. John reached over to give her a thump on the back, and then, to her distress, left his arm lying casually along the back of her chair. Which was as out-of-character as everything else he was doing tonight. Ellie shrugged her shoulders aggravatedly. He seemed not to notice. She did it more aggressively. He laid his hand directly on the ball of her shoulder and rubbed it with a conspicuous absent-minded air. Ellie froze in her seat.

“We haven’t discussed that lately,” Devon was saying blithely, apparently attaching no significance to where John’s hand was. Devon was kind of a touchy-feely guy, though, so maybe he expected other men to be, too. For her part though, Ellie was irate enough with John that her usual pounding-heart, dry-mouth, clenched-abdomen reaction to him was diminishing.

Huh, it could be That Man had struck on a solution that was better than hers. If he did a good enough job acting like a bastard, maybe she just wouldn’t feel attracted to him anymore.

“Actually it’s something we don’t quite agree on, yet,” Devon was continuing. “Ellie’s been pretty stubborn. But I’m confident I’ll win her over to my point of view.”

Ellie’s displeasure enlarged itself to more fully encompass its second-most provoking target. Why would he tell everyone something that personal? And his self-assurance was grating.

“I see,” John nodded. “So how’s the sex between you two been, then?”

Magritte gasped. Ellie choked on her food for the second time in five minutes. Again, John thumped her on the back while smiling suavely at Devon, who’d finally caught on to the fact that something wasn’t right here. He frowned at John with fuzzy irritation and obviously no clue how to respond to such an outrageous question.

“Hey, bro” – he began, only to be cut off by his future brother-in-law.

“Uh, what are your plans for the weekend, Magritte?” Chuck inserted a trifle loudly, trying to help the situation. He also eyeballed the male arm that was still on the back of Ellie’s chair, a bit more alert to some of the vibes dancing around the table than was Devon. Then he shared a look with Sarah that was fraught with some hidden meaning, but some of which Ellie believed was _I told you so_. That was confusing, unless Chuck had known John planned to act this way – in which case her brother was most definitely in for it after everyone left tonight. And Sarah offered an _I’m confused, but also enjoying myself_ and _what can we do?_ expression in return. So they both knew something was up with John, and possibly with Ellie. Great, that was all she needed, for either of those two to be linking John and Ellie together in their heads.

Magritte was answering Chuck with strained politeness. Chuck was nodding back. John chose that moment to move his arm. Which would have been most welcome, except that he did so by skimming his large hard hand along her shoulder to her sweater’s neckline, and then across her bare skin to slide sensuously beneath her hair. He drew his strong fingers caressingly up the length of her neck before continuing to pull back.

The glide of his skin against hers was more than Ellie’s stretched sensibilities could handle. Pulse fluttering madly, breath coming in a harsh gasp, she jerked forward in her seat. Too forcefully. She bumped the table with a hard jar, and plates and serving dishes clattered. The half-full wine glass in front of Magritte tipped over, spilling a pool of red liquid across the table and onto Ellie’s friend before she could move out of the way. With a screech, Magritte jumped to her feet, her lap full of wine. 

Ellie leaped up too, distinctly hearing John Casey chuckle. He didn’t even try to pretend concern, or fake an apology. But he did at least move his napkin from his lap and offer it across to Magritte. She took it without looking at him and began to mop at her pants. Ellie herded her down the hall to the bathroom, supplied her with club soda and a washcloth and towel, and left her there. She came back out to where everyone else had remained seated.

Sarah and Chuck were leaned in to each other, whispering inaudibly. John had his fork and was swallowing a bite, the only one still eating. Devon rose when Ellie appeared.

“She alright?” he asked solicitously, giving her a one-armed hug. It was as annoying as John’s arm on her chair had been, and nowhere near as sexy. Ellie shrugged him away and spent a few minutes mopping up the wine that had reached Magritte’s chair.

“She’s fine. A little wine isn’t going to kill her.” She turned to glare pointedly at John as she sat back down. _She’s my friend, and she’s too tough to get upset that easily._ He must have understood some of that, because he dipped his chin. And then he waggled his eyebrows at her, cockily.

Arrgh.

Magritte came back to the table, sitting down somewhat gingerly with a wet lap. Determining that she wasn’t going to knuckle under in defeat, Ellie brought the desert in from the kitchen. Chuck continued to eye John with suspicion while his sister served everyone. And, clearly, he came to the conclusion that she needed defending. Which was sweet, but quite unnecessary, especially as what he proceeded to do was put the finishing touches on the destruction of her dinner party.

“You’re not the only one with hobbies, Magritte,” he said cheerfully into the strained silence that dominated the room. Magritte said nothing in reply, just paid studious attention to what was on her fork. Smart woman. Chuck plodded on anyway. “Casey’s got some pretty interesting ... interests.”

Ellie didn’t know where he was going with this, but Sarah and John were exchanging glances that looked ... dangerous. Sarah must have done something to Chuck under the table, because he winced. But that didn’t stop him.

“Yep. Ask him anything about any science fiction show. He can quote you character and episode. Big sci-fi geek, our Casey.”

Science fiction? Ellie didn’t know about anyone else, but she was feeling like she’d gotten caught in an episode of the Twilight Zone, tonight. John’s face, which had been pretty much a permanent smirk the entire evening, became a snarl aimed at Ellie’s brother. 

“Can it, Chuck. Any little factoid gems that might have gotten stuck in my head are only there from hearing you and Morgan drone on and on about that stuff ad nauseum,” he asserted.

That sounded odd to Ellie. “I don’t remember you ever hanging out over here when they’re doing their, uh, science fiction thing,” she mused. “Do you all go over to Morgan’s?”

“That’s kind of weird, actually,” Devon contributed. “I’ve wondered about that myself. Older – sorry, _mature_ \- guy like you, hanging out with kids like Chuck and Morgan? What’s that about?”

John’s scowl became even fiercer. “I have _never_ ,” he asserted, “been to that little slimeball’s house.”

His vehemence made the whole thing weirder. And was the name-calling really necessary? Chuck concurred with his sister’s thoughts about the slur made against his friend, because he continued his attack.

“Oh, come on, Casey, no need to be ashamed. You might as well just come out of the closet,” he soothed in a voice fraught with mock concern. “It’s OK, we’re all friends here.”

Ellie never knew whether he did it accidentally or deliberately, but Devon misunderstood that statement. Deeply.

“Oh,” he said, with the dawning light of realization on his face, “ _that’s_ what’s up with you and Morgan, Casey. Never saw that coming, man. Wow, Ellie, were you ever barking up the wrong tree tonight! Hey, Magritte?” He had a good chuckle. He had it all by himself, because the rest of the table couldn’t quite manage laughter. Magritte’s eyes had closed. Ellie’s chest was clenched in some kind of vise; had her fiancé lost his mind? He’d just taken the atrocious behaviour of their guest, and then her brother, and one-upped it. 

Sarah had one hand to her mouth, staring wide-eyed at John as though she thought he might explode.

But John was, contrarily, the opposite of explosive. “Sorry, Devon,” he said as smoothly as any arch-villain in a movie, calmly picking up his wine glass. Only his eyes betrayed that he was hugely enjoying himself, at the expense of everyone around him. “I don’t play for that team. If I did, Morgan would be about last on the list of eligibles.”

Sarah dropped her hand. Relief at this mild reaction was written large on her face. 

“Hey”- Chuck started, getting even more annoyed at all the insults his best friend was enduring. Sarah put a quieting hand on his arm. That worked until Casey moved his wicked, deliberate gaze to his coworker.

“If anything, I’ve always thought maybe Sarah had something to worry about in the Morgan department. You guys are awfully close. Chuck.” His tone was sugary and suggestive and acerbic all at once. Not a soul believed what he’d said, but no one could believe he’d said it, either. After a moment of silence, Chuck gurgled. It seemed that was all he could do. 

“On the other hand,” John continued casually after a sip of wine, “if I did swing that way, I might give Ellie a run for her money. You’re much more my type, Devon.” And he leered again. This time at her fiancé. 

Who just stared back with his mouth open.

Ellie had no words. No movement, either. Magritte did, though; she stood to her feet.

“I’m going to call it a night,” she said steadily to Ellie, ignoring everyone else at the table. Ellie nodded jerkily, and managed to get her feet moving as well. An odd feeling of resignation, and an insane desire to laugh like a hyena, crept over her. She mused that there was only so much discussion of the sexuality of strangers that one individual could take. Her friend had stuck it out as long as any sane person could be expected to. She’d been a trouper, really.

Magritte left, mumbling about needing to soak her pants. She also said she’d see Ellie tomorrow, which came out sounding more like a threat than a promise. Ellie nodded helplessly. 

Chuck made a move to pull John aside; Ellie hoped it was to give him a lecture about his behavior tonight. She herself wanted to take a pot to the side of That Man’s head. But Devon, awakening belatedly to the idea that Ellie might be in need of a little support, insisted they all help clean up. Ellie wanted to shoo everyone out of her kitchen, but knuckled under with a sigh. At least with that many hands, it was short work, and then Devon hinted broadly until Sarah and John left. Ellie didn't see them to the door - she didn't quite yet trust herself not to do bodily injury to John.   
  
Thankful for Devon's intervention, Ellie felt her displeasure with him lessening. By the time Chuck went off to bed, she was enough in charity with her fiancé to give him a full hug. He grinned at her as they separated.

“Let’s never have that guy over for dinner again, OK?” he laughed.

Ellie returned his smile. “Agreed,” she said fervently. She set her hands on his shoulders.

“Devon,” she began, reluctantly, not really feeling up to the discussion they needed to have. He raised a hand to cut her off.

“I know we have to talk,” he said, stepping back from her. She let her hands fall to her sides. “I’m just not ready. OK? Soon, Ellie. But not yet.”

"Soon," she repeated. And then sighed again. She was just so tired, for many reasons. Too tired to deal with whatever was going on with Devon, right now. "All right, Devon."


	7. Distressed

Devon went to bed. Ellie was bone-tired, but she wasn’t ready to sleep, and the house felt claustrophobic. So she slipped outside to sit near the door and breathe in the night air.

It was calming as always, and reviewing the dinner in her head, Ellie began to feel the humor of the situation. But only with reluctance. Across the way, lights were on in John’s house. And after a minute - _well of course,_ she thought - his door opened. He’d seen her sitting alone out here, and was coming over. She watched him move in her direction with a sense of inevitability. And narrowed eyes, because she hadn’t lost her annoyance with him.

He halted in front of her and stood there looking down in the twilight, without a word. She didn’t rise, just tilted her head back to glare at him. He saw it in the light from the window and grinned, unapologetically; and God help her, it was sexy and adorable and she found her resentment slipping a little. She grasped it tight and bolstered it back up. He tilted his head questioningly at the step beside her; she responded with a sigh and a wave of her hand. When he lowered himself onto the step, he was close enough that she could feel the heat of him. She knew she was playing with fire, letting him so near; but surely her irritation at his recent ridiculous behaviour would be enough to shore her up. He didn’t speak; she didn’t speak. The air was crisp around them. Somewhere nearby a cricket chirped.

Finally, Ellie broke the quiet.

“You’re a very bad influence on my language,” she told him tonelessly, propping her elbows on her knees and sinking her chin into her palm. 

“How’s that?” He folded his long legs with movements that should have been awkward from a man his size, but which he managed to make graceful. That was an aggravating trait in a man she was trying hard not to want, even if his insanity this evening had helped dial down her attraction to him by quite a bit.

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to do so much swearing in my entire life,” she articulated, rather less tonelessly, “as I have these past few months.” He liked that; he grinned. She rolled her eyes and looked away, because she liked his smile too much. “Tonight,” she continued, “I was mentally calling you names I’ve never before called anyone.”

From the corner of her eye she saw that his grin became a smirk; he liked that too. Ellie shook her head. 

“You know, if you objected that much to me setting you up with someone, you could have simply refused the invitation.” Ahah, there came her very genuine anger, spilling into her voice. Ellie was glad to note that down as proof that tonight, John’s sexiness wasn’t enough to completely deprive her of her senses. She stared out toward the street, feeling her jaw muscles tensing. “The message would have been received, loud and clear. And much less painfully! What was that all about?!”

She felt John hitch his shoulders once. “Not exactly sure,” he answered, “except I know that I wanted to make damn sure _you_ knew that what you were doing wasn’t gonna work.”

He sounded as frustrated as she felt. Maybe that was where his dinner-table craziness had originated, but she wasn’t in a mood to be sympathetic. She kept her head turned away from him. “ _What_ isn’t going to work?” 

“You know what I’m talking about,” he asserted firmly. Ellie sat up straight and crossed her arms stubbornly. John grumbled under his breath.

“Maybe I don’t,” she challenged him, clenching her jaw. “Maybe all I know is that tonight, for some completely obscure reason, you were an unmitigated _bastard_.”

He rumbled something inaudible again. _Good_ , Ellie thought. He deserved a bit of the aggravation she’d gone through at dinner.

“You _know_ ,” he reiterated, through gritted teeth. “So maybe we’ll be able to get past this, after awhile. Dammit, I hope so. But you can’t just throw a pretty woman at the problem and expect it’ll go away. We can pretend all we want – and we should, for everybody else’s sake! – but we need to at least acknowledge the truth to ourselves. You can’t just turn things off like a faucet!” The tone of his voice was getting more and more irate.

“What things?” Ellie threw back, recklessly. She did turn and look at him now, and their gazes tangled like they always seemed to do. Even that was infuriating, because _dammit_ , she hadn’t asked for any of this! “Maybe you’re completely off-base,” she exclaimed, “did you ever think of that?! Maybe I have no idea what _things_ you’re talking about!” 

She acknowledged to herself that she had no idea what she, herself, was talking about. But she was just so angry right now. Angry enough to ball up a fist and punch him, hard, in the shoulder, even though she was certain there was no possible way that she could hurt That Man.

But then she knew provoking him had been a mistake, because he caught her clenched hand in a vise-like grip. Startled by the speed with which he moved, Ellie tried to pull back, but didn’t have time before she was caught doubly, once by John’s hand and once by what she saw on his face. The usual hardness of his expression had cracked, somehow. But she had only a second to see something distressed and vulnerable underneath there before he moved again.

In one lightning instant, he was no longer posed tensely beside her; he was on his knees before her, leaning over and into her. So close that he was touching, which her brain maintained just enough sanity to chant was dangerous, dangerous. So close that the wordless rumble rising from his chest reverberated through her own body. A great hard fist pressed into the step on either side of her hips, touching, and her bent legs were trapped by the breadth of his torso, also touching. Ellie’s breath caught in her throat, first at the shock of it and then at the heat of his body. Heart thudding, she swallowed with difficulty and leaned back, but he only pressed in closer until his chest was flush with her knees. And then he dipped his head down. He spoke, and his lips brushed her ear, which halted her breath completely.

“I’m talking about _these_ things,” he growled harshly, the warmth of his breath sending shudders to her soul. His voice engendered an inner ache that swelled to encompass her heart as he tilted to set those lips roughly on the skin below her earlobe.

“These things,” he rasped, quieter. He opened his mouth on the skin of her neck. Ellie felt the scrape of his teeth, and she was on fire; lost, as her nerve endings exploded in sensation. Her breath came back to her in a forceful gasp that quickly turned into a moan as her head arced backwards. It met the support of his hand, large and warm and strong, which gripped the base of her skull while his other found the ridge of her spine and yanked her to him. She tilted forward onto her knees between his thighs and all the carefully constructed distance between them was gone, like that, in an instant.

Kneeling, pressed roughly against him, all of Ellie’s world telescoped. It collapsed in until everything she knew was contained and defined by the perimeter of John. She had nothing else but his muscled chest crushing against her softer one, his corded hands fisting into the back of her sweater, his hard legs clenching around hers. The pounding of his heart and the raggedness of his breathing were echoed by her own until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. It was agonizing, it was beautiful, it was turning her into a purely physical creature capable only of desire and want and need.

But then, just as Ellie’s trembling hands began to move to touch him in return, the distance was back with jolting force. John pushed himself away from her so abruptly that she half-fell onto the step behind her. He sat back on his heels, staring at her, and for a long minute it seemed neither one of them were going to be able to move. For a moment the only thing Ellie’s bereft senses could register was his absence. 

Slowly, her stunned brain began to function. At first all she knew was that she’d had him a second ago, and now she didn’t. Loneliness of an intensity she’d never known broke over her. She had to shake that off, she told herself, gaining cognizant thought at last and registering that John looked as steamrolled as she felt. But it hadn’t been so much, had it, what had just happened? Those, those _things_ John had been so insistent about? They hadn’t even kissed.

But she didn’t fight that battle for very long before she admitted that she was lying to herself. Staring into the hot, hard eyes of the man who’d just held her in his arms, Ellie was forced to honesty. The look they shared, long and fraught, was a silent acknowledgement that they both knew the truth; that what they’d just done was something. 

Something they might not be able to backtrack from, or ignore, or cover over.

Overwhelmed, Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her shaky hands around her knees. The sound of their still-rapid breathing was loud in the night air. She heard small pebbles grating against concrete as John got to his feet. She wasn’t, right at that moment, able to follow suit. When she re-opened her eyes, though, somehow she met his gaze. It glittered in the dim light, and she knew he wasn’t going to apologize.

She was glad.

“Good night, Ellie,” he finally said. His voice was still rough, hardly recognizable. It sounded the way her soul felt – rubbed raw, almost to bleeding. She nodded, the motion jerky. He pivoted and left.

Ellie sat with her forehead pressed to her knees. It was a very long time before she went inside.


	8. Vengeful

She had whimpered, high and sweet, almost a keen. That was what had brought Casey to his senses, enough to pull back from Ellie. The sound echoed in his head as he stood and walked away and left her there alone. It resounded through his sleep that night. It was still there in his mind the next morning, which was the cause of his particularly rotten mood that entire day. He was so surly at the Buy More that Chuck took to heading people off if they looked inclined to approach Casey for anything at all.

So he had made zero sales due to Chuck steering everyone clear of him. But he also didn’t damage anyone, which in retrospect was a good thing. After ‘work’, Casey was out in the yard trying to expend his pent-up frustration. He was attacking weeds growing against the side of the house (with rather more vehemence than weeds generally called for) when Woodcomb arrived home. Striding up the walk in his scrubs, the doctor waved with a friendly smile. Casey tipped his chin in response, politely if silently. But as Ellie’s fiancé disappeared into the house he shared with the two Bartowskis, Casey was pondering what size bullet would make the nicest hole in the other man’s head.

Ellie, on the other hand, spent the day trying to avoid Magritte at the hospital. That worked for most of her shift, but her friend caught her before she left the parking lot and demanded that they go somewhere and _talk_. Ellie resigned herself to having coffee and facing the music. Magritte had a number of potent words to unload, and she did so. It took her awhile to finally wind down to:

“Ellie Bartowski, that was absolutely the worst set-up I’ve ever had. And believe me, that’s saying something.”

Ellie really didn’t have much with which she could respond, except to say that John wasn’t normally like that, something must have been wrong with him yesterday, and she was so, so sorry. Magritte wasn’t one to hold grudges, so at least they were able to part with their friendship intact. Though as they were walking out of the coffee shop, Magritte got the last word in.

“You owe me, Ellie. You owe me _big_.”

Ellie could only nod resignedly, because she did.

That night, Devon appeared for supper, and even hung around afterward, surprising Ellie by helping to clean up. That was something he’d done frequently in the past, but not at all in the more-recent past.

“Ellie,” he said, laying the kitchen towel that he held down on a counter and coming up behind her to bracket her with his arms. He rested his chin on the top of her head. Shocked, Ellie froze where she was.

“I want you to know that I’m good now,” he told her softly. He ran his hands down her bare arms and tangled their fingers together. Not knowing what to think, Ellie let him tug her around. He smiled down at her. “I kind of had a problem there for awhile, but it’s resolved. No more problems now. So you have nothing to worry about, Ellie.” He leaned forward and caught her lips in a kiss. Ellie couldn’t think how long it had been since he’d kissed her; she couldn’t think at all, really. She just stood there and blinked as Devon pulled away and smiled gently down at her. “We’re all good,” he affirmed again, and stroked her cheek. “I have to go meet some friends right now, but I’m going to be around a lot more. We can kick the wedding preparation back into high gear.”

Ellie didn’t move as she watched him disappear into the bedroom. Once the door closed, she managed to shake her head. She was supposed to be able to shift gears that fast? Go from months of silence and distance to sweet smiles and soft words? “Slow down a bit, fella,” she muttered, finishing up the last bits in the kitchen. Devon came out, pushed his feet into shoes, and with a jaunty wave went out the door and was off with his friends. Ellie shook her head bemusedly, and somewhat sadly, finding she was just glad to have him out of the house.

But tonight, she had other concerns. Moving with purpose, she went and plopped down on the couch beside her brother, who had the TV turned to an old Dr. Who episode. She swung her tired, sock-clad feet up onto the cushion and watched her toes rock back and forth.

“Chuck,” she said in a commanding tone. He flicked her a glance but kept his real focus on the TV screen. She nudged his leg with her foot, not very gently.

“Last night at dinner you seemed ... like you were expecting something from John. Something, maybe, just like what he did.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

Chuck tipped her another glance, and then with obvious reluctance picked up the remote and muted Dr. Who. He tilted his torso in her direction, too. Progress, although he was still sneaking sideways peeks at the screen.

“Not ... exactly,” he responded. “But I knew he was going to resist being set up, Ellie. I told you that going in.”  
  


And so he had. Ellie nodded, ceding him that point. What she really wanted to get at was another, much more burning question, anyway.

“Well, from what I knew of him before last night, I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort. Just what kind of man is That ... guy?”

“Casey?” Chuck cocked his head at what he obviously found to be an odd question. He was looking fully at her, now; she’d managed to usurp all his attention from Dr. Who. “Just to double-check, Ellie; you’re waiting to ask this until _after_ you’ve tried – disastrously, I might add – to set him up with a friend of yours?”

Ellie smiled ruefully. “Yes, Chuck, that’s what I’m doing.”

“Well.” Chuck rubbed his chin. He seemed to have nothing to say.

“Come on, Chuck. He’s your friend. I hope you know something about him.”

“I do, I do, I’m just ... undecided as to what to tell you.”

Ellie wrinkled her forehead at him. He was talking crazy.

“Ok. Ok.” He straightened his shoulders industriously. “Casey. I think ... I think I can safely say that Casey would give his life for me.”

Ellie’s feet stopped rocking. Her eyebrows climbed her forehead.

“That was ... really not what I was expecting you to say.”

“Yeah. I’m probably safe in saying that he’d shoot me, too, give the, uh, provocation. Or orders.”  
  
“What?” Ellie stared.

Chuck shook his head and reached for the remote again.

“Nevermind, Ellie.”

Dr. Who sounded forth on the subject of Daleks. Ellie let it go, though she was left with her questions unanswered. She really didn’t know where her brother’s brain was. But she had other things to contemplate, too, things her brother couldn’t help her with.


	9. Punished

John Casey was standing at a courtyard-facing window, arms crossed, a mighty frown riding his forehead. He should be working. General Beckman had called a few hours earlier with news that a suspected Fulcrum agent was thought to be headed to the Burbank area. At the very least, he ought to be corralling genius flash-boy. But Agent Walker would have him in hand ... she was probably even enjoying the having. Hell, she was probably _holding_ Bartowski’s hand. Literally. Idiotically. But at least Casey was sure of one thing; no way was she going to let Chuck get captured.

And out in the courtyard was the real reason he wasn’t working. Flash-boy’s sister was doing ... something. He hadn’t really sussed out what. Erotic gymnastics, maybe. Perhaps seduction yoga. Didn’t actually matter, the effect on him was the same. She had changed from her normal rather chic bohemian look (which he found all manner of sexy) to something a little more blatant; athletic clothes, but of a teeny, revealing fit and make. Right at the moment, she was bent over at the waist, facing away from him, palms flat on the ground with one of her most attractive qualities up in the air and aimed his way. She held that pose long enough for Casey’s lip to curl into a full-fledged sneer. It was aimed at himself, because if he had an ounce of self-preservation left, he’d close the blinds and turn around and immerse himself in work.

But apparently he had some heretofore unknown self-destructive tendencies, because he didn’t. Instead he stood and watched while Ellie picked a jump-rope from the ground, stretched up to her full height, and turned around in his direction. She began to twirl the rope and jump in place. Ellie was generously proportioned in all the right places, and even contained by a binding athletic bra, certain positive physical aspects jounced and bounced, demanding his attention. All of it, even though he told himself with gritted teeth that he had work to do. Important, saving-the-nation-and-the-western-way-of-life work. Ellie, now ... Ellie was just the reason he did the work.

Whups. He halted to review that thought, because it hadn’t formed the way he’d meant it to. People _like_ Ellie, that was what he meant. He did his job for all Americans, of whom she was only one. One of many. That was how it had to be. She wasn’t his, and she could never be special. Even if it was very specifically Ellie Bartowski and no other American who at this precise moment was making his heart speed up and his fists clench and his mouth dry out. 

There was suddenly cool metal against his right palm, and it surprised him enough that he was able to tear his eyes away from the moving, breathing temptation outside his window. Glancing down, he saw that his hand had curled around his gun. 

Grunting disgustedly at himself, he let go of it. What was he going to do, shoot her for being sexy?

No, not for being sexy. But maybe, he thought with his eyes fastened on her again, maybe for belonging to someone else.

_Not mine_. He repeated it to himself as she slowed her pace, dropped the rope, and began to jog in place. Then she left the courtyard, headed out on a run. He marked which way she went, and then went for a run himself. A very long run. In the opposite direction.

Casey made it a point not to be out mutilating weeds anymore when Woodcomb got off-shift. He wasn’t sure how believably his ‘nice-if-reserved neighbor’ cover could hold up to any more encounters with that guy, and it had already taken a beating at that infernal (though fun) dinner party. He found himself having trouble staying away from his windows, though, because Ellie had developed a sudden and inexplicable propensity for the outdoors. 

He saw her constantly. When he left for work in the morning. When he came home at night. Every time he glanced out into the courtyard – there she’d be. Without fail dressed in something alluring, and without fail employed by some activity or other that moved her body around in fascinating ways. She started something green growing alongside her house, and this seemed to necessitate that she do a lot of bending and kneeling to care for it, while clothed in cut-offs that were cut off very high indeed, and a tiny tank top. She washed her car in the inevitable white t-shirt and another pair of cut-offs ... this pair used to be sweats, and she was soon soaking wet. She even, one day, hauled the pressure-sprayer out and cleaned off the exterior of her house. The wall hadn’t looked particularly dirty to Casey. _He,_ on the other hand, felt decidedly dirty, watching her from a darkened window like some perverted old man. He was pretty good at slinking around and spying, hey, it was his job. But doing it to catch a glimpse of some woman that he wanted ... it just wasn’t how he did things. He wanted something, he went and got it. Simple as that.

Normally. This was anything but simple, and was getting worse by the moment. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t shake her. Those few days with the waitress up north, a little while back, should have cleared her out of his system. But she was still there, fire in his veins, consuming more of him by the moment. And he was starting to fear that no detox program he could think up would put the flames out.

The watching got excruciatingly painful, not only but also not least in a very physical sense. His morning showers got longer. Then evening ones became a daily necessity, too, whether the day had been physically strenuous or not ... or even more necessary, if not. And then he was needing an afternoon one too ... he was turning into a wrinkled prune, he reflected one day. He was hunched over a keyboard, staring at a monitor with his thoughts far from the screen.

And apparently that showed. 

“Major Casey!!” The stentorian words whipped daylight into the grey fog clouding his brain. He jumped to attention without thought. General Beckman leaned into the vid pickup on her end. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, General,” he assured her quickly. “Nothing. I was ... considering options, that’s all.”

She sat back, scowling. She hadn’t believed him. But he was focused now, so she moved on. 

“There aren’t any options. I’m giving you orders, Major. Find out exactly where this Fulcrum agent is. And if he’s genuinely headed toward Burbank, get Chuck out of there. Then handle the agent.”

“With terminal force, General?”

She nodded grimly. “Always on the table when we’re talking about Fulcrum.”

Casey showed his teeth in a ferocious grin. Good. He was in the mood to kill somebody.

*********

Ellie was finding a fierce delight in what was, she admitted candidly to herself, playing with fire. She glimpsed John’s face a few times, after one of her little attention-drawing displays in the courtyard. He was on edge, irritated, even infuriated ... and wading hip-deep in lust. She knew that meant danger for her. But she also, in a deep heretofore unknown corner of her soul, believed that John Casey didn't want to act further on his feelings for another man’s fianceé. He just didn’t. It went against his moral code, and he held that moral code very firmly.

Which made her, she freely admitted, a tease. Maybe worse than that. It made what she was doing that much more wrong. But she was finding a very wicked delight in playing a role she’d never had been before ... the temptress. This wasn’t who she really was, but for a little while, she reasoned, it was fun to play. Especially as the person she was playing with was both dangerous and safe. That combination got more and more heady as the days passed.

He’d be watching her, and she’d look over at him, and he’d meet her head-on. It felt like a collision every time. His eyes would be hard, and hot, and her hands would grow shaky and her breath short. His jaw would flex and she’d have to suppress a moan. Even from across the courtyard it was tantalizing, _he_ was tantalizing; the look on his face, the desire in his stance that he didn’t bother to hide when it was just the two of them.

She was always the first to look away.

So she didn’t really know who was winning ... or even really what they were playing. If it was a game at all. Which she was coming to doubt.

But she couldn’t quite make herself stop, even though she thought that one day, they might both just spontaneously combust. And Chuck and Devon would gather over the ashes and puzzle about them, and their deaths would forever be a mystery.

But it was just for a few days, she reasoned, and John deserved it. 

And so did Devon.

One other thing she also hadn’t stopped was trying to understand Devon. He’d become almost – but not quite – his old self again, and she just didn’t know what to do with him. Should she press him to revisit something that, according to him, was in the past? She wasn’t sure she could – or should - let whatever it was go. She tried a couple of times to get him to talk. He just breezily assured her that no problems existed any longer.

“They exist for me, Devon,” she told him crossly. “You were absent in mind – and usually in body! – for months on end. I got pretty used to the distance, to tell the truth. Don’t expect me to just take you back in, no questions asked, on your say-so alone.”

He nodded his head gravely. “I hear what you’re saying, Ellie. I’ll give you all the time you need.” And he’d pecked her on the cheek and tried to change the subject, leaving her feeling as if _she_ was the one doing the taking and _he_ was the one doing the giving, here. How had the conversation turned on her like that?

He’d give her all the time she needed?! Damn right he would! She steered him back on-topic just long enough to be sure he knew that while he might be sleeping beside her, that was as close as their two bodies were going to get for awhile.

A good long while.

He gave her that grave, understanding nod again. She gritted her teeth and bore it. 

But things did seem to be better in the house, all-around. Ellie hadn’t realized how high the level of tension had gotten until it suddenly decreased. She even overheard Sarah comment on it, late one night as Ellie and Devon headed off to bed and the blonde was cuddling with Chuck on the couch.

When Ellie awoke a few hours later and slipped quietly out to the kitchen to get a drink, she was surprised to see that though Sarah was still there with Chuck the two of them were no longer all wrapped up in each other. They sat a prim distance from one another with their heads bent over ... a watch? No, because they were talking into it and someone was answering back. Ellie was too far away to hear what was being said, but it was something serious. Apparently serious enough to keep Sarah from noticing that Ellie was up and around. Sometimes Ellie thought that girl had Spidey-senses or something, the way it was impossible to be around her without her knowing you were there.

Feeling somehow like an intruder – this is my home! she told herself indignantly – Ellie cleared her throat. Sarah turned a bland face toward her, but Chuck jumped a little before facing her with a too-innocent smile. Ellie frowned at him. 

“Everything OK out here?” she asked, walking around from the kitchen into the dining area. 

“Oh, yes,” Chuck assured her. “We were just discussing ...”

“A camping trip,” Sarah inserted when it seemed Chuck couldn’t find words. “We’re talking about doing another camping trip. A longer one this time, since we both enjoyed the last one so much.”

For something they had both enjoyed “so much”, Ellie didn’t recall hearing any stories or seeing any pictures. She cocked her head curiously at them. Something was off, here.

“Uh” – Chuck inserted. “How long a trip are we talking?”

Sarah looked at him just as blandly as she’d looked at Ellie. “Couple of weeks, maybe. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“Yeah.” Chuck’s face wasn’t happy. “Good.” He coughed.

Sarah smiled.

Ellie frowned.

“But now,” Chuck went on with a cheery smile that seemed really out of place at two o’clock in the morning, “Sarah’s got to get going. Early morning, right, sweetie?”

  
“Yep.” Sarah let him walk her to the door, where she gave Ellie a friendly smile and Chuck a peck on the cheek. Ellie nodded goodbye with her arms crossed.

“Everything OK?” she asked again after Chuck had closed the door behind his girlfriend.

“Yes,” he said, and it sounded sincere, so Ellie relaxed.

“Look”, she said, turning back towards her bed, “I don’t have to know every little thing that goes on with you two. But it might interest you to know that Sarah is a much better actor than you are.”

Chuck muttered behind her, something that sounded like (but surely wasn’t) “well, she’s had a lot more practice.”

*******************

It was well into August, and the next Saturday evening Ellie came home feeling over-warm and sticky. Passing the courtyard fountain, she cast a glance towards John’s house in a move that had become automatic. His lights were on. Her schedule during the past week had meant she wasn’t around much when he was off-shift, and she found that she’d missed him. Even though they didn’t speak, just knowing he was there was ... a comfort, somehow and quietly, in her soul. Tonight he was home. She realized that with a glad quickening of her heart, for which she bit her lip and castigated herself. That intimate, welcoming feeling was something that should be reserved for Devon, who she knew was also home.

She wiped a hand across her sweaty forehead – it really was unseasonably warm, there were damp marks under the arms of her blue scrubs – and eyed the water flowing through the fountain with longing. It was a heavier fall than normal, perhaps on account of the weather; occasional drops splashed over the low wall that created a small pool at its base.

Ellie didn’t even know if the water was filtered or not, but it almost didn’t matter. A good dousing sounded really good right about now, she thought.

And just as she thought it, her need for it increased a thousand fold, because John Casey stepped out his door.

He had an overflowing trash bag in his hands, and certainly should not have had the effect on her that he did. _Trash isn’t sexy_ , Ellie told herself hazily, watching him stride down his steps in the fading sunlight. 

_No,_ she agreed with herself. _But that man is._

And he was. Clad in worn jeans and a plain black t-shirt, he manhandled the trash bag down toward the street, and into a container whose lid he crammed down. His arms rippled and his shoulders bunched, and Ellie swallowed. She was just starting to turn away when he looked up, and she didn’t get far enough around before he caught her eyes.

Of course. Because their eyes didn’t ever _not_ catch. _Well, if you wouldn’t look at him so much,_ that caustic voice in her head said. 

_But he’s so_ nice _to look at_ , her whiny voice said back. Ellie sighed, and tore herself away completely, turning determinedly with her keys in hand.

But then she caught sight of the fountain again, and she was now flushed and so much hotter than she’d been before John walked outside, that she dropped her keys and bag onto the pavement and bent, dipping her fingers in the water.

She heard one last sound from John’s trash can and then silence. Good, he was going inside and would leave her alone. She didn’t feel like she could handle him tonight, and she was thinking it was about time to end the little mock-seduction game she’d been playing. She cupped a hand in the water and splashed it on her face, then her neck. The ‘game’ had been getting too serious, had been feeling too much like the real thing, and she thought maybe John had been punished enough. She flipped another handful of water directly at the V of her scrub top and tilted her head back, sighing as the cool water ran down over her chest.

“What are you trying to do to me?” A rough male voice gritted directly behind her.

Gasping, Ellie whirled around, water dripping from her hands in a sheening half-circle. How had he gotten so close without her hearing him? Standing in a small puddle, she stared up into the blue of John’s eyes. His nostrils were flaring. His jaw looked so tight she wondered dazedly how his teeth were surviving the pressure.

“I – you – I didn’t know”- she began, fumbling with her words because oh heaven, he was so close. 

“Yes you did,” he grated at her, his arms held crossed over his chest as though that was all that was keeping him from hauling her up against him.

Which was where she wanted to be, so badly that she was shaking. She tilted half-away from him as she backed up a step, and was proud to have that much control over her legs.

“No, I – it’s hot, the water” – she tried to explain, twisting away from him and gesturing quickly. She hadn’t accounted for having moved nearer the fountain, and her hand went through the cool wet that was falling from its second tier, which erupted a spray of water toward John. It first hit him - dampening the tee so that it clung delectably to his chest – and then, as she reacted by jerking her hand back toward herself and spinning around to face him again, her own. Her thin scrub top formed instantly to what was beneath – herself – and that was where John’s eyes focused, then fastened. She quailed at the look she saw in them.

“ _Damn_ it, Ellie,” he hissed between clenched teeth, and then he was all around her.

At least, that’s what it felt like. He _took_ her, slammed her up against the fountain’s low stone wall with knee-jarring force, her head in his large hands and her torso crushed to his hard one. Before she had a chance to even try to fight the swell of craving that rose under her breast, his mouth was on hers. Hard, so hard, but velvety and warm, too; she let out a high-pitched breathy sound that couldn’t be labeled, and when her lips parted he breached them. It was an invasion, but an uncontested one.

Because Ellie didn’t fight.

She was tired of fighting and so she didn’t; she parted her lips and answered his thrusting tongue with her own driving foray. Her hands were violent, raking into his hair –she’d never touched it before, it was heavenly – and her legs weren’t gentle as she raised one to hook it around his knee. She jerked him towards her, into her so that she collapsed backward, and he growled as he put out a hand barely in time to brace their half-fall against the fountain’s stone. The hard grittiness of it bit into her shins and the sharp angles dug into her thighs and tomorrow she’d have marks there but tonight she was feeling his skin, his muscle, oh gods so much hardness and strength and she didn’t care about tomorrow.

One of John’s hands stayed were it was, holding her head for his hot and bruising kiss; the other began to yank her uniform top out of her pants. The rate of her breathing hitched up one more level. Ellie pushed herself up into him frantically, trying to make every centimeter of their bodies meet, taking and returning what he dealt out with the pent-up fervor and hunger that had been building inside her since that day with the microwave.

With his breath coming fast and harsh, John twisted one hand into her hair, hiked her up off the fountain’s ledge, and brought her head to his level by boosting her up onto his kneeling thighs. She came eagerly, wrapping both her legs around him tightly, and met him kiss for kiss. Touch for touch. For a moment she thought she felt something hard and oddly shaped at the small of his back, but he reached and adjusted her legs and then ran that hand up along her scrub-clad calf, then higher. Bending forward, John moved into and over her, his knees resting on the edge of the pool. His hands were on the bare skin of her back, now, learning the curve of her spine and each shoulder blade. It was heaven, the touch of his skin on hers. Ellie’s heart beat so quickly she couldn’t catch her breath around its pounding. John pressed in closer and as she plied his neck with her lips she felt his pulse rate clipping away at just as fast a rate as hers. He leaned further, into her touch, tilting them both backward ...

And into the startling wetness of the fountain’s spray. It cascaded down over and onto them, cool for their heat, calm for their ardor.

It brought them to their senses.

In the same moment, they each became utterly still. Ellie closed her eyes and pressed her face into his neck while the water she’d been craving cloaked them both in its flow. Just for a moment. Then she loosened her shaky legs and without looking at her John stood them both up. Her feet met the ground and she stood there. So did he. They were both soaking wet, and breathing fast and hard.

When she could, she took a step sideways, out from between him and the wall surrounding the fountain’s pool. He pivoted with her. His hand was pressed to where, if this were a cop show, a gun would ride at the back of his waist.

This wasn’t a cop show. It was her life. Really more of a comic tragedy, Ellie mused hazily as she edged toward her door.

John was the last one to speak, just as he had been that other night, the night after the dinner party. His voice was even harsher than it had been then.

“There is only. So much. That a man can take.” After biting those words out, he turned around and strode off.

_A woman, too_ , she thought dazedly, watching him leave – again. Then she sank onto her steps and was left sitting there, head in her hands – again.

_How am I supposed to keep living near this man?  
_


	10. Finished

There were bruises on Ellie’s legs. This wasn’t so remarkable of itself; she often barked a shin on a corner of the nurse’s station, or a patient bed, or a large piece of medical equipment, while rushing around doing her job at the hospital. However, this morning she was careful to be up and dressed before Devon awoke. And that evening when she got home she pulled on long pants. She was stifling in the nearly 100-degree-heat, but she just didn’t want anyone asking about those marks. So she cranked the a/c instead of putting on cooler clothes.

After dinner with Chuck, she sat alone on the couch, Devon having worked a later shift today. She pulled her sore feet up onto the cushion and started to massage them, but soon found herself distracted by where she knew herself to be black-and-blue under her pants legs. She rubbed the area absently, staring across the room at nothing. Her thoughts were on the stone of the fountain from which she’d acquired the bruises, and the actions she’d willfully and knowingly participated in which caused them. She had spent too much of her time today fighting off memories of how John had felt - the length and breadth and warmth and hardness of him - and how he’d made her feel. And she’d spent the entire day guilt-ridden.

Because if what they’d done out there by the fountain hadn’t been cheating, _and_ poaching, she didn’t know what was. It had been so wrong. And largely her fault, she felt, for the little game she’d been playing with John’s libido. It would have helped if she had some one to confess to, to mull things over with out loud. But she had no one she could share this with. She didn’t want anyone knowing this shameful thing about her. There was already John, who unavoidably knew, and who she was better off never setting eyes on again. Just the thought of what the two of them had done yesterday gave her palpitations, and to her shame they were not entirely guilt-spurred. Lust was pretty prevalent in there, too.

She planned to take extreme care not to run into That Man. And she was sure he would go out of his way to avoid her, too. But she knew by now that she wasn’t going to be able to get him out of her thoughts, and the semi-normalized contact she currently had with Devon wouldn’t help any. That day at work, Ellie had seriously contemplated moving. But she imagined bringing that up to Devon; “hey, honey, why don’t we look for a new place in, say, Nova Scotia?” She got an instant image of the “who-are-you-and-where-is-my-fiancee” look she’d see on his face.

So instead she tried enumerating, for the millionth time, the cons on her pro/con John list. 

One was that he smirked a lot, a habit she detested in others. And he scowled. Yes, he had a beautiful smile, but he frowned way more often than he smiled; generally at her brother, who was supposedly his friend. Which, when Ellie took time to think about it, was a little strange. What was a guy his age doing hanging around with people the ages of Chuck and Sarah if he didn’t enjoy their company? The more she considered this, the more struck by it she was. It might even be kind of ... creepy. And then there were those moments she could almost have sworn that John and Sarah had some kind of mutual secret language ... they’d make eye contact, slight hand or eye movements, and the next thing you knew one or the other of them, sometimes both, had to leave. It was very, very odd. If anyone had a secret language, shouldn’t it be Chuck and Sarah?

That thought had occurred to her earlier in the day while she was standing at the nurse’s station. Ostensible perusing the chart of a patient she couldn’t, at that moment, have named, Ellie caught her breath. If Sarah had a secret language with someone who wasn’t Chuck, it was entirely possible she had other things with that person ... things she shouldn’t have with anyone but Chuck. It was an awful thought; but it put the blonde girl’s interactions with John into a whole new light.

Ellie couldn’t get rid of the idea; it had haunted her for the rest of her workday and on the way home that evening. She hadn’t thought Sarah was that kind of person, but she also knew that anyone could fall into temptation. More, Ellie knew intimately just how severe a temptation John Casey could pose. She didn’t like to think of him as someone who’d steal another guy’s girlfriend, either ... he’d even told her as much that day with the microwave malfunction, and she’d believed him. There had been absolute conviction in his voice. But then there was what they’d done out by the fountain. And what did she really know about John Casey? He was a big guy, he worked at the Buy More and didn’t enjoy it, he had a good appetite and was very sweet about helping in the kitchen. That was it. 

Well, and that his kisses were like manna from heaven to the starving.

All in all, it didn’t amount to much. Sweet guys could be backstabbers, couldn’t they? Sure they could. 

And there was one such sweet guy, possessed of heretofore unknown potential for dealing out pain, coming through the door into the house right now. Standing up from the couch where she’d been sitting staring into space, Ellie shoved her troublesome thoughts aside with an effort and gave her fiancé a determinedly bright smile. 

He returned it, bright and breezy. But Ellie’s eyes began to narrow after he met them for about one second, then immediately focused on the kitchen. This was quite a switch from the past few weeks, during which he’d been ultra-attentive, buying her flowers and hanging around constantly and touching her at every turn. She swiveled to watch him make a beeline for the fridge, calling “‘how was your day?” over his shoulder.

He was trying too hard to be normal. When what would really have been ‘normal’ was for him to acknowledge that they had had, and still had, problems. Big problems. Perhaps, Ellie had realized yesterday, insurmountable problems. He had secrets of unknown gravitas; she had ones that were ocean-liner-sized. Given this, his current ‘nothing-could-possibly-be-wrong-with-this-picture’ attitude was grating. Especially considering that guilt was chewing a ragged hole through Ellie’s digestive system.

Devon grabbed bread and meat and began to throw a sandwich together.

“How was your day?” he questioned again, lightly. Easily, even blithely. While Ellie stood there with the marks of another man’s attentions on her body.

Suddenly, it was enough. Just ... enough.

“Devon.” Her words came out quiet but clipped. He slapped his pieces of bread together before looking at her questioningly. 

“Sit down.” She pointed to the couch. “We need to talk.”

He frowned. “Can it wait, babe? I’m kind of hungry.”

Ellie grit her teeth. She shook head and sat back down herself, staring over her shoulder at him. Something inside had snapped. She was through fighting with herself, and Devon had run out of lifeline.

This was the end, one way or another.

“We’re talking,” she said in a low, measured tone. “ _You’re_ talking. Right now.”

He twitched, but her expression must have conveyed how deadly serious she was, because he walked around into the room and sat. Ellie folded her arms. On the couch, Devon seemed to become unable to look anywhere but at his own feet. One of his hands rubbed the back of his neck while the other hooked into his waistband.

“You’re right, Ellie,” he finally acknowledged, slowly. “We do need to talk ... I guess I just needed you to force me into it.”

Ellie watched him, not quite able to believe that she was at last going to find out what was going on with him. Despite the level to which her frustration had been ramped by his closed mouth, and despite the increasing difficulty of living with the guy when she was so hurt and confused and angry about his closing her out, she found herself contrarily tensing up now that it seemed the moment of revelation had come. Her mind raced with possibilities. He’d sold their house to Morgan and Anna at a quarter of its value so they could learn to be adults. He’d emptied their savings so he and some buddies could take a heliboarding trip around Nepal. His parents asked to move in with them after they were married, and he’d told them ‘yes’ ...

“Look,” he began. “I know you’ve been able to tell something’s wrong, and it’s getting to you. I’m sorry for that.”

. . . or maybe it was none of those eventualities. His voice was very quiet and more serious than she’d ever heard from him. Ellie swallowed. This wasn’t going to be good.

“I think ... I think ... no, I more than think.” 

Ellie trained her gaze on his moving lips and said nothing. Devon swallowed and twisted his torso left, then right, before fully facing her again. His chest expanded in a deep breath, and then he just said it.

“I’m not in love with you anymore.” The words were bald and ugly in the taught air between them.

Ellie thought maybe her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak. She did blink, once, slowly.

“I don’t know why, and I’ve been so frustrated and confused about this,” Devon rushed on, as though afraid he wasn’t going to get all the words out in time. “I’ve been trying to carry on like I am, because I should be, but I’m faking it.” He met her eyes fully, but only briefly. “I’m faking it,” he repeated more raggedly. “I _should_ love you. You’re the most perfect woman in the world for me. So I’m scared. Because if I fall out of love with you, Ellie ... well, how am I ever going to love anyone?”

Silence. 

Was she supposed to answer that?

Once more, Devon wasn’t meeting her eyes. Ellie felt a sprig of emotion start to poke through the blanket of cold around her numb heart. There was something he wasn’t saying.

“I think we need to break this off,” he finished.

_Break it off? What, like a Kit-Kat bar?_

And there was still something he wasn’t telling her.

“Is there someone else, Devon?” Her voice was so toneless it didn’t sound like her own.

Devon swallowed again, hard. “I haven’t – I _haven’t_! – cheated, Ellie. No way would I do that to you. But ...” he clenched his eyelids together. Shutting out the sight of her seemed to help, because his words came more slowly and softly. “There has been a woman at work. I’ve said nothing to her. But there’s something there ... something powerful. Something almost irresistible. So hard to deny, I don’t know if I should deny it.” His eyes popped back open. “I’ll always love you, Ellie, even if I’m not _in_ love ... That doesn’t end for people like us, does it? But I just ... don’t want to marry you. I’m saying this badly, Ellie. I can’t explain it any way that you’ll understand.”

But Ellie shook her head, minisculely. Her mind repeated his words. _Something powerful ... irresistible ... so hard to deny_.

“I think I understand better than you think, Devon.”

His eyebrows drew together in concentration, before the light of comprehension dawned over his face. “Really? Who ... no.” He flung up a hand to stop her from imparting information she had no intention of giving him. “I don’t want to know.”

Good, because he wasn’t going to. Not today, anyway.

“I don’t want to, either,” Ellie told him.

“So.” Devon sank backwards into the couch beside her and bent his head, running his hands into his hair. “What,” he asked quietly, staring at the floor, “do we do now?”

Like she should know?

“I don’t know.” Ellie’s voice cracked a bit, and with horror she realized there were tears in her eyes. Blinking them back furiously, she trained her face away from Devon. “It’s pretty clear we’re not getting married, though.”

Silence descended, close and thick and awful. Devon let it lengthen. Ellie stared down at her hands, and there caught sight of the ring he’d given her. She watched her fingers move to tug it off with an odd disconnection, as though they didn’t belong to her. She held the cool metal band between her fingers, tremblingly, for just a moment. Then she held it out to Devon without looking. It seemed a very long moment before she felt him take it from her.


	11. Stunned

Bartowski was standing in the middle of a Buy More aisle staring down at his phone with a disturbed expression. Ordinarily Casey wouldn’t have bothered himself about Chuck’s emotional disturbances – he tended to have a lot of them – but since the team was on high alert for the Fulcrum agent or agents who seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth after surfacing on their way to Burbank, he figured anything that put that expression on the Intersect’s face was his business. So as he neared him Casey reached out and grabbed the phone from Chuck’s hands.

“Hey!” flash-boy squawked, reaching futilely for the phone. Casey stiff-armed him away with ease while he read the text on the screen. _I’m taking today and the weekend off to get my head sorted out. Won’t be home till Monday. Please don’t wreck the house._ From Ellie.

Get her head sorted out? “You and Woodcomb gonna be bachelors for a few days, huh?” That couldn’t be what was causing Bartowski’s upset.

“Ah – not exactly.” Chuck grabbed for the phone again and Casey let him have it this time. The younger man put it away, frowning. “You haven’t reviewed any of the surveillance recordings from the last few days, huh?”

“Walker did,” Casey snapped, annoyed at the implication that he might not be doing his job. He’d turned all interior surveillance of the Bartowski residence over to his partner. It was just ... better, that way. And she hadn’t informed him of any occurrences that would give Ellie the need to get her head ‘sorted out’.

“And you haven’t talked to her?”

“Of course not. Why would I talk to Ellie?” Had he looked guilty there, for a second? Did Chuck suspect something?  
  


Chuck eyed him strangely. “I meant Sarah, Casey.”

Shit. “Oh. Yeah, regular sit reps.” Casey folded his arms firmly, to distract Chuck and because now he was onto a scent. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Uh ... well.” Chuck mussed his own hair. “Devon moved out last week.”

_Moved out._ Casey blinked slowly. “What do you mean, ‘moved out’?” There was no ‘moving out’ in his conceptual universe. Devon was a fixture. An ugly, pointless one, but screwed in tightly exactly where he wasn’t wanted. Not even after Casey and Ellie had completely lost control at the fountain that day had she owned up and come clean, and he figured if that didn’t do it nothing would. So ... what? “Moved out as in ... moved _out?_ ”

Chuck nodded dismally. “Yeah. No taking some time to think, no needing some space for a little while – they’re done, I guess. Short of some miracle.”

Casey hadn’t seen Devon around over the past week, but he’d seen the man drive away with his snowboard and some luggage and figured he was headed off somewhere to play. Hearing that he and Ellie were done, caput, Casey was ... he didn’t have an appropriate word for what he was. In shock. Flabbergasted, there was a good term. Vindicated, somehow, and ... well, not scared. What did he have to be afraid of? He was just a little befuddled, that was all.

“Why?” he barked out. “What happened?”

Chuck blinked and tilted his head suspiciously, but Casey barely noticed through the intensity of his drive for information.

“She didn’t really say,” Chuck told the older man in measured tones, “and I don’t think it’s any of your business.” He folded his arms as if to indicate that his lips were now Fort Knox.

Casey sneered at him. He was recalling that there was a reason completely unrelated to Ellie for which he’d originally sought Chuck out. But at that moment Walker entered the store, eyes gathering Casey and Chuck and efficiently herding them toward the Castle.

“Uh-oh”, Casey heard from Chuck. He didn’t bother with such meaninglessness himself as they clumped down into the Castle, staggered one by one to avoid rousing the suspicions of Buy More’s employees. Though most of them were so dimwitted that Casey wondered, not for the first time, if they even needed to bother.

General Beckman was on the screen. “Agent Walker informs me that Fulcrum has possibly surfaced in Burbank. From our end, it appears that Chuck is definitely their target.”

As if anything else in Burbank could possibly qualify as an alternative target, Casey thought sardonically.

“What?” Chuck squawked, betraying the fact that this was news to him. It had been Casey’s assignment to inform him in the few minutes’ warning the two agents had gotten before the briefing with the General. He sensed Walker sliding him a sideways glance, one that asked why that hadn’t happened. Casey scowled. Filling Chuck in was what he’d been on his way to do. Ellie’s text had distracted him.

It wasn’t good that Ellie was disrupting his attention to the job. Not good at all. And he realized with disgust that it was happening right now; he’d missed something.

“ . . . out of town,” Walker was saying. “Good timing for a trap.”

Trap? That effectively snapped Casey’s brain to the current situation. 

“I don’t think ..” Chuck began, but was over-ridden by General Beckman.

“If we have certainty that your sister is out of the way for the entire weekend, you have a go.” She signed off abruptly.

Ellie out of town for the weekend was a good thing, Casey told himself. He could put her out of his mind and concentrate on his duty. The fact that this took effort scared him – just a little. But now wasn’t the time to be occupied with anything but the mission, including his discomfort over the feelings a woman was stirring in his gut.

With General Beckman off the screen Walker and Casey set to planning their trap. Walker would move into the Bartowski home for the weekend. Casey would too, but not as obviously – to all appearances he’d still be across the courtyard in his own home. The timing of this was good for more than just a trap, he decided. Some action to pull his priorities together – that’s what he needed.

The next day, though, camped out on the floor in what had been Ellie’s and Devon’s room, he was feeling differently about this plan. No action had happened, yet. And no, Ellie wasn’t here, but all her _stuff_ was. He lay on the floor staring up at the shade-darkened ceiling with patches of sunlight dancing across it, shoving away thoughts of Ellie and Devon together in the nearby bed. The room smelled like her. A drawer had been partially open when he’d entered, and something frilly was sticking out. It still was, because the goal was to leave everything in here undisturbed. Ellie could never know he’d spent any time – let alone what would potentially be two days – on her bedroom floor. So there it stayed, something pink and dainty, reminding him of his thoughts on her underwear months ago; he’d wondered if she had anything more feminine than the basic white he’d seen her in. Well, that question was answered. A dozen others were roaming his brain, though. He took the chance to curse Chuck for his refusal to let anyone but himself and Walker sleep on his sheets; otherwise Casey could have caught his sleep shift in Chuck’s room and avoided this torture. 

When he finally rose and prepared for spending the night on guard duty, his lack of sleep made Casey unsuitable for human interaction. Sarah had had the day shift, as it made sense that the girlfriend would hang out in Ellie’s absence. She and Chuck would sleep in his room, still playing the loving couple, while Casey staked out the rest of the house. The two young people made an early night of it, a move spurred by Casey’s unvarnished surliness.

That was fine with Casey. He thought if he had to listen to Chuck’s yammering at all he might just put a bullet in the wrong person.

So Chuck and Sarah went to bed, early if not quite early enough for Casey, and blessed silence descended on the house. Casey moved about in the dark, checking the sensors he and Walker had placed at all the possible entrances and the silent alarm that would vibrate against his wrist and Sarah’s if anyone breached them. Then he set up for a long night of being on watch. 

The hours crept by. As trained as he was, Casey usually spent times like this hoping something would happen, anything to break up the long periods of alert readiness. Tonight that was fueled by an additional desire to take his frustration, lack of sleep, and uncertainty out on an appropriate target – a villain. Any villain would do.

As the night wore on, though, it seemed he wasn’t going to get his desire. Midnight passed, and two a.m. Then five a.m. Morning light was considering creeping over from the east when Casey’s head swung around and his posture stilled. He hadn’t heard anything, exactly, and his alarm was quiescent against his arm. But there was something ... he rose from where he’d been squatting against a hallway wall, then paused to get a better sense of things.

There _was_ a sound, from down near Chuck’s bedroom. Casey knew those two weren’t up and about yet. Adrenaline beginning to pump, he moved silently and swiftly to the bedroom door. It was ajar. Gun out and safety off, he nudged it open. It swung silently on hinges that he’d oiled the day before. Chuck’s bed came into view with two lumps in it, both of them breathing. Pushing the door further, Casey entered the room in a low crouch, automatically checking the area behind the door – and then catching a glimpse of movement at the window.

Casey dropped to the floor by the bed as a dark figure, difficult to visualize in the pre-dawn gloom, pried at Chuck’s window. It began to slide open. The alarm at Casey’s wrist didn’t react. Damn, the intruder had disabled it somehow; which meant he or she knew to expect security and agents here. Not good. He risked shoving his shoulder against the bed to jar it and awaken Walker.

There was the barest rustle, and then silence. She’d have her gun in her hand, then. Despite her lamentable tendency toward emotional entanglements, when it came down to an acute situation, Walker was good at what she did. Casey had no fears there.

The intruder had gotten the window open and was almost into the room. Casey had been inching toward the end of the bed when the alarm at his wrist began – finally –to vibrate. He stopped, and his lip curled up in pleased disdain. They may have disabled the entry-way sensors, but obviously they hadn’t gotten to the interior ones he and Walker had spent the previous evening setting up, like those criss-crossing the kitchen floor.

The man – in the slowly strengthening light, gender could now be identified – was halfway to the bed when Walker exploded up off it, kicking the blanket out of the way with expertise and leaping at the man with a flying tackle. Chuck awoke with a squawk and Casey didn’t stay to see more.

Darting out of the room, he headed to the kitchen. Another black-clad figure stood in the doorway raising a communication device to his mouth. He saw Casey and his hand reversed direction, toward the gun he wore in a side holster; but Casey’s was already out, and trained.

“Don’t,” he snarled, half-wishing he _would_ – but common sense prevailed in the other’s head and he froze obediently, hands in the air. Casey lifted the other's gun out of its holster himself, and gestured the man to turn around. He reached for his handcuffs, shifting with his prisoner to keep him in gun sight. Just as Casey moved his weight to his right foot, a heavy blow meant for his head glanced instead off his left shoulder. The arm smarted with pain and then went numb, but he didn’t have time to consider that as he swung around with his gun now held to bludgeon. The grip connected with the temple of yet another man in dark clothing standing behind him. Casey registered instantaneously that the guy was going down, his eyes rolled up, and so he continued around to end his three-sixty turn once more facing the first man. 

He was no longer there. Casey was peripherally aware of Walker, with Bartowski behind her, exiting the bedroom; but his attention was on Man #1 who was postured to deliver a roundhouse kick to Casey’s head. He ducked it and felt his gun knocked from his hand by a hard Fulcrum fist. That just left that hand free, though, to clip a fast right uppercut into the guy's gut. His left arm was useless, so he followed up with a low-driving shoulder into the man’s chest and a head-but up under his chin. The Fulcrum agent got in a good punch to Casey’s jaw, but then he went down, and Casey fell on him to keep him there; the man fought his captor’s weight, twisting and clawing his arm out to find the gun that had fallen to the floor.

“Chuck!” Casey bellowed, because Walker was on the floor, too, subduing the man Casey had felled first, who had started to stir. “A little help here?”

“What? What!” Chuck appeared at his side, verbally dithering but looking ready to stomp on the guy’s head if need be.

“Handcuffs,” Casey barked out while maneuvering to corral the leg that was trying to knee him in the gonads, “my left arm’s dead.”

Chuck found the cuffs, got them on the guy who continued to struggle under Casey’s restraint, and then he backed off to Sarah’s side. Walker had produced rope from somewhere and was tightly binding the man Casey had cold-cocked.

“The other one contained?” Casey asked. She nodded.

“Handcuffed to the bed,” Chuck offered. He raised a hand to rub his shoulder as though it hurt, and Casey noted that Bartowski’s knuckles were abraded. So once more the Intersect had been an active player in the team’s reaction to a threat. He’d remember to put that in his report.

He grabbed the gun he’d dropped while scuffling with the agent who now wore his handcuffs. He trained it on him, because the idiot was snaking his body slowly across the floor in the direction of the living room door, as though none of them were going to notice if he got to it.

That was when said door opened, early morning light spilled across the floor, and Eleanor Bartowski walked into their midst.


	12. Free

The drive up to Magritte’s cabin was a few hours long, but pleasant, with little traffic on a late Friday morning. Once she got out of the city, Ellie found herself relaxing; the air was clearer, and her head seemed to be as well. The past few weeks she’d been working and thinking about the loss of her relationship with Devon, and about avoiding John Casey. She had been trying _not_ to think about the future. It had been too much. She hadn’t even mentioned to very many people yet that she and Devon had split. But the news had gotten out anyway, of course, and that had given her even more to face at the hospital; the half-sympathetic, half-curious overtures of her co-workers.

But right now she was driving. Just driving with the windows down, her hair moving at the whim of the near-autumn wind that reached playful fingers into the car. Maybe there was some validity to that whole life-on-the-road obsession that some people had, she mused. The highway was smooth beneath the whir of her tires. The trees were green, the sky was blue ... she breathed deep. It was good, after all, to be alive, after the pain of amputation followed by days of numbness. She’d seen Devon a few times around the hospital, unavoidably, but communication other than head bobs and polite smiles had been avoidable, and avoid was what they had done.

Magritte took her out a few times to get her good and drunk, but Ellie had been afraid to get too loose, for reasons that had nothing to do with Devon. She knew what little good her inhibitions did her around John Casey when they weren’t diluted with alcohol. She didn’t want to run the risk of doing something monumentally stupid.

She switched the radio on to a soothing jazz station, considering that. Her mind, her heart, and other parts of her still leapt at the thought of That Man. If she’d given it thought before now, she would have guessed that the misery of separating from Devon would have obscured her visceral reaction to John. But that wasn’t what had happened. Yes, breaking with Devon hurt – but the pain felt old. Emotionally they’d been separated for a long time. When she probed around her heart, she found no fresh wounds. Rather, to her surprise, it seemed she’d worked through a lot of her issues during those months that they allowed the relationship to drag on much longer than they should have.

It might even be a good idea to have a meaningful conversation with Devon, one which would give her closure and then ... well. Maybe it was time to have some of the things that she’d been denying herself.

Once at the cabin, Ellie scoped the small, comfortable space out and then sat under the trees in the back with a mug of coffee in her hand, feet propped up. With the scent of pines all around her, she punched Devon’s number up and left him a message.

She spent Friday in quiet relaxation with a book, pottering around to get lunch, then eating out on her own for supper at a tiny restaurant that specialized in lake trout. The next morning Devon returned her call, sounding surprised but also relieved to hear from her. Their conversation was brief, but Ellie felt much better for having it. Devon ascertained that she had no problem with him hanging with Chuck every now and then, and that she was fine with seeing him at the house when he did. Final arrangements were made about some of his things. Ellie hung up and stared at the dark cell screen with a twinge. She knew that was likely the last call they’d be sharing.

But she set the phone down on the arm of her wooden deck chair with a sense of release that was stronger than the hurt. Then she pulled on sturdy shoes and went for a walk in the woods.

Clarity. Peace, even. Freedom. She was feeling many good things that she’d gone a very long time not even knowing she was missing. She walked for a bit, just breathing. By the time she got back to the cabin, she was thinking about the house back in Burbank and some painting that might do to brighten it up here and there. She found herself looking forward to a project in a way she hadn’t in a long time. She headed to bed feeling invigorated. She’d get up early tomorrow, she decided, and head home. She had a lot she wanted to do; including, if she got the nerve, paying a call on a certain tall, smoky-sexy neighbor.

She slept well, rose before the sun, threw her duffel into her car and headed back into town. She stopped for coffee just as the sun was rising, and was carrying the hot liquid and her bag as she approached her front door. She could hear something, voices or movement, inside. Huh, she mused, Chuck sure was up early.

But when she turned the key and opened the door, she walked into insanity.

Standing in the middle of the doorway, her coffee and bag both puddling disregarded at her feet, Ellie was unable to register much beyond an impression that she had stepped across a portal into an alternate universe, to a true Twilight Zone world. John Casey, next-door neighbor and Buy More salesman, stood menacingly in her living room with a gun – an actual gun, a gun, her mind stuttered on the word – out and pointed authoritatively at a man who lay _in handcuffs_ on her floor. Chirpy, butter-wouldn’t-melt Sarah Walker knelt with her knee digging harshly into the spine of another black-clad man while pulling tight a rope that was knotted around his wrists. Chuck, Ellie’s own dear brother Chuck, was in the middle of saying something, gesturing over his shoulder and appearing completely in command of himself in the midst of a situation which should have made him appear just the opposite.

That wasn’t her brother; she didn’t know these people. This couldn’t be her house. She almost backed out of her coffee puddle and the house, but she was stopped by John's voice.


	13. Caught

“Well, shit.”

It was John’s voice, slightly guttural and so _him_ , but he was handling that gun as naturally as if it was another appendage, which was completely foreign to her concept of him. The man on the floor between them wriggled and Casey growled. The wriggling stopped. Ellie shivered.

“Uh,” Chuck said into the awful silence. “Uh – you’re having a bad dream?” His voice cracked on the last word. Casey sent a look over his shoulder at her brother that conveyed disgust better than any other facial grimace Ellie had ever seen.

“We’re role playing,” John said to Ellie. “A game.”

“What?” Ellie managed to gurgle out. This didn’t look like any game she knew.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck inserted, “a game. Don’t freak out, OK?” Ellie’s numbness lifted enough that she was able to narrow her eyes at him in disbelief. Chuck left Sarah’s side to approach his sister. Ellie’s head swung back and forth and he halted, turning his endearing please-believe-me-I’m-just-a-fumbling-computer-nerd look on her.

“I’m not – I’m not stupid!” She told him, angry that he’d even try. “The way you all were, when I walked in here – the, the _looks_ on your faces”- she shook her head, again, and then it just wouldn’t stop; without her conscious control it continued to rotate right to left and back again in denial. “None of you are that good at acting. And certainly not for some stupid game!” She managed another step backward, until she was on the other side of the threshold. The increasingly warm morning sunlight spilled across her, an absurd contrast to the cold shock twining around her intestines. “If you can’t give me a good explanation for this, I’m calling the cops.”

John knelt beside the man on the floor, un-cuffed one hand, and re-cuffed him to a nearby chair. If this was a game, Ellie’s inner voice demanded aggressively, hadn’t she just effectively ruined it? What was the point of continuing? The restrained men should be climbing to their feet by now, laughing at the misunderstanding and being introduced. Instead, the one John had just re-arranged was watching them all with a sullen expression, and the one under Sarah looked to be unconscious.

John hadn't put his gun away while he moved, and as he returned to his feet Ellie realized her hands were at chest height, palms facing out. She realized it because she saw John eye her posture. His jaw tightened. For the briefest moment, there was an expression on his face which, even as confused and frightened as she was, twisted painfully at Ellie’s heart.

Until he shoved that gun into his waist band as though he’d done it a thousand times, and snapped “watch her” at Chuck. Guns and waistbands ... something niggled at the back of Ellie’s brain. Hadn’t there been, that momentous day by the fountain, something at the small of Casey’s back that had been rather gun-shaped? Yes, there had been, and he’d steered her away from it. That whole time they’d been ... doing what they’d been doing, he’d been wearing a gun. And that time she was sure he knew she was watching him, even though he couldn’t possibly see her; and the way it was impossible to sneak up on Sarah – so many things clicked into place, all at once.

Sarah had risen now, too; her gun was just as real as Casey’s, judging by the way she held it. Ellie swallowed. If she tried to just run, would those two let her? She didn’t think so. And she surely wouldn’t have time to grab Chuck. Of course, Chuck didn’t look as though he thought he needed grabbing. He seemed … what? Not at ease (did he ever?), but certainly in the know.

“Getting the other one,” Casey said obliquely to Sarah, and he disappeared in the direction of Chuck’s bedroom.

“Ellie”- Chuck began, stepping toward her again.

Something clicked near Ellie’s ear. Chuck’s forward advance stalled, and she saw him blanch. Frighteningly, Sarah’s gun rose in a blur to aim unwaveringly at Ellie, who stumbled backwards in reaction - and into the arms of a stranger.

“No!” Chuck gasped out, as Ellie’s stunned brained processed that Sarah wasn’t looking at her, but at the man who now held both Ellie’s arms down, harshly, with one of his. She struggled, and he ‘tut’ed at her and waggled something into her peripheral vision. She stilled as she saw the shape. That was a gun to her temple, a gun that had gone click.

Chuck lurched forward.

“Move and I kill her,” the man told him in a voice that was smooth and languid and really incredibly unlike how Ellie imagined any bad guy’s voice should sound.

“Chuck!” Sarah snapped commandingly, sounding very un-Sarah-like. Chuck stood still, his eyes huge and fearful.

“Please,” he babbled, “she has no idea what’s going on, she’s a civilian, she’s”-

“Shut it,” the hostage-taker returned, calmly. “Let my team loose. Do it now and you might all get to leave here alive.” He smelled good, Ellie registered dazedly. Clean, with some kind of sandalwood soap. That seemed more wrong than his non-bad-guy voice.

“For how long?” Sarah returned, her chin up and gun still trained. Somewhere beneath her numb fright, Ellie was aware of a wash of disbelief at how insane her world had become. Chuck was still standing where he’d been told to stand, but his eyes were narrowing and his jaw was beginning to jut forward. Ellie recognized that look. Terror for him clawing at her throat, she shook her head frantically at her brother; the muscled arm around her torso slid up and harsh fingers wrapped around her throat, making it difficult to breathe and effectively stilling her head movement.

“For as long as it takes to get what we need,” the vile, smooth-voiced, clean-scented man said conversationally to Sarah. “I don’t see any untying happening. I’m losing my patience.” The gun that hovered just out of Ellie’s peripheral vision bumped her temple once, deliberately. Ellie felt her chin beginning to tremble.

Chuck raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Just take me,” he said. “I’m the one you want. I’m the Intersect.”

Whatever that meant, it was important; Ellie read that in the sudden tension of the body pressed to hers, and in Sarah’s angry expression. There was a buzzing in her ears. Ellie tried to swallow against it, but all the saliva seemed to have deserted her mouth.

Avoiding Ellie’s desperate eyes, Chuck took a deliberate step forward –

And stopped again, as something off to Ellie’s right popped. The man holding her jerked to the left and abruptly lost all his tension. She was jarred forward as he sagged down against her, his arms falling and his gun clattering down; then he just sort of slid off her back.

Uncomprehending, and afraid of her own movement, Ellie edged her head around in the direction of that popping sound. There stood John Casey, bigger than life but heart-stoppingly real, next to the open window into Chuck's bedroom. Sunlight glinted dully off the barrel of the not-fake gun that he held steadliy in two hands. Ellie startled, belatedly, before registering that the weapon was trained on the body that was slumped on the ground behind her. He’d shot him, she numbly realized. John Casey had just killed the man holding her hostage.

Ellie’s limbs were limp but she managed to turn. Her body running by rote, she began to bend to seek for a pulse in the hostage-taker. He was looking very dead, courtesy of the holes in each of his temples. One was much larger than the other; entrance and exit, her medically-trained mind mechanically assessed the wounds left by a bullet’s through-and-out path. But John was suddenly there big and blurry at her side, all efficient energy as he shoved the body away from her feet. Somehow he beat her to the pulse checking. Good enough – her hands had begun to shake, while his were steady as a surgeon’s should be. He looked as rock-solid as he ever had. And he’d just saved her life.

So he couldn’t be the bad guy, could he?


	14. Blue

Chuck was there then, trying to hug her; and Ellie returned his embrace frantically, feeling she would never be able to get her limbs to stop trembling now that they’d started. Images of the past few minutes fired in sharp flashes through her brain; her brother with an unfamiliar countenance of desperation and fear. Sarah Walker’s hands creating a rope knot around a man’s wrists. John Casey’s blue blue eyes over the business end of a gun barrel.

But he wasn’t, none of them could be, the bad guy. The intense desire to believe that burned through the numb haze of shock clouding her brain. As insane as the last – was it only fifteen minutes? – had been, nothing would be right in the world if she had to think that John Casey or Chuck Bartowski might be on any side but the right one.

Hers.

Ellie turned in her brother’s arms. John – was that his real name? - was kneeling over the man he had shot; he shook his head and held up one finger to Sarah (true name also uncertain), who was speaking into something strapped to her wrist that was obviously not a watch. Ellie’s brain, still on that remote setting that was making her notice insignificant details, zeroed in on the handcuffs attached to one of the dead man’s wrists; one metal circle hung open and empty, signifying that he’d been restrained and gotten out of the cuffs somehow.

Standing numbly, staring down at John Casey’s large, hard hand patting carefully over a dead man’s pockets, Ellie decided that she’d had enough of being defensive and reactive. She pushed firmly against Chuck’s chest; he resisted but she insisted, wordlessly, and he let her go. He stood close, though. Maybe it was a good thing; she wasn’t steady on her feet, not by any stretch of the imagination. Possibly being proactive could wait just a few more minutes. 

Apparently there wasn’t anything interesting to be found on the dead bad guy; John stood to mirror Sarah by talking to his wrist, saying things like ‘mission complete’ and ‘clean-up’. He was smooth, efficient, businesslike. Every competent movement murmured ‘professional’. It was screamingly obvious that this was his true vocation.

Shooting people. 

Her heartbeat was slowing its rate, but it kicked back up as she watched the calm mastery with which John went about his job. He was in command, of himself and the situation. Whatever this was that he did, he was good at it. He was also, Ellie realized slowly, not looking at her. He didn’t send one glance in her direction; not a gleam, not a flicker. He had no questions about whether she was well.

Chuck was different. “Are you OK? Did he hurt you?”  
  
For a moment, Ellie was hazily unsure which ‘he’ Chuck meant. All those long months that her eyes and John’s had seemed to be magnetized to each other, and now there wasn’t anything, not a gleam, not a flicker. She’d wanted it gone, that unwilling, unwitting connection – and now that it seemed it was, she wanted it back. Desperately.

Sarah had ducked inside and came back out with a plastic trash bag – Ellie recognized it as one from under her sink – which she wrapped around the dead man’s head. Then she and John hoisted the body and carted it proficiently in through Ellie’s door, as though they’d done such a thing dozens of times. Maybe they had. Ellie watched this bizarre procedure in bemusement, vaguely noting that John was favoring his left arm; he didn’t use it to lift. 

She allowed her brother to tug her inside as well. As John and Sarah dropped the body near the wall, it became clear that the trash bag was to protect her floor from leaking fluids. Ellie stepped across her threshold again and stumbled over the handbag she’d dropped there a few minutes, a lifetime, ago.

Her phone was in there. Pro-action, she reminded herself, instead of reaction. Batting off Chuck’s support, she bent and picked the bag up. But before she could open it, a large hand – John’s – appeared and pulled the bag from her.

“Can’t let you do that,” he said, and nothing else. He rooted one-handed through her bag, removed her phone, and slipped it into his own pocket as she watched in silent anger. 

“We’ll give it back,” Chuck placated. John cast him a look Ellie couldn’t interpret and turned away to talk to Sarah. Ellie heard him remark sarcastically about men Sarah cuffed not staying cuffed. A low-voiced argument erupted from their direction, but Chuck distracted his sister by tugging on her arm.

“Ellie, please sit down. I know – I know you have questions.”

What else was there to do? Ellie sat where her brother gestured, her couch. Such a mundane object, a couch, to be present and solid beneath her when her world had gone insane. Questions? She had more than questions. She had ... she didn’t know what she had.

Maybe nothing. No Devon. Perhaps not a brother, because it seemed she knew nothing about who he really was. She certainly didn’t have John – or whoever he was.

“You’ve been living a lie.” That was what she chose to say, sitting with her fingers curled into her palms, her confusion and fear and anger audible. Her chest felt quivery, and she felt she had a right, damn it, to some answers. She had just been a hostage, a gun had been held to her head, over whatever Chuck was mixed up in.

And John Casey had saved her. She didn’t know what that meant, but it meant ... something.

Chuck winced and collapsed down beside her. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Ellie watched him, wondering. This was her brother? He opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, and his face suddenly appeared older than his years; weariness sat on his shoulders like a cloak. Ellie frowned, concern for him rising out of old habit and a sister’s heart.

“I never planned out what to actually say to you, if it came to it,” he murmured. “I imagined you knowing the truth a hundred times. I just never ... I never expected it to happen like this.”

Despite her anger, Ellie couldn’t take his pain – she’d never been able to. “Why don’t you start,” she returned sternly, but reaching out to clasp his arm, “with what the ‘truth’ is?”

“Chuck,” snapped a voice from behind them. Those two seemed to do that a lot, the snapping. This time it was John, from where he stood with a good vantage point – and line of fire, Ellie supposed – over the two restrained but still living men in black who were on her floor. 

“Are you kidding me?” Chuck shot back at John, sitting up, his voice laden with derision. “You can’t possible be thinking we’re going to come up with a story to cover this. Face it, Casey. Our cover’s blown, all to hell. It’s time to tell the truth.”

John snarled. There was no other word for it, and Ellie flinched. Sarah moved in to lay a hand on John’s forearm; Ellie eyed that and flashed back to her earlier suspicions about those two. Sarah and Chuck weren’t at all lover-ey, right now, and so it seemed that relationship had been part of the lie. Were John and Sarah together?

Appalled at herself, she shoved that question aside. Her brother was involved in something dangerous, something big, something life-threatening, and here she sat trying to guess who was sleeping with whom? _Priorities, woman_.

Bartowski began to tell his story to his sister, and John let it happen. Flash-boy was right, after all; there was no pulling this one back in. Sarah made sure he kept it minimal, though; the Intersect was a code name for information Chuck possessed, Chuck was a national security asset, and he, Sarah, and John were a team. That was enough, for now, and even that was more than Ellie ought to know, for her own safety and that of others. Her having this knowledge meant decisions had to be made. 

Casey watched Ellie’s face out of the corner of his eye. Her hold on her brother’s arm became a clutch, and she interrupted a few times with a rather frantic catch to her voice. He watched the tale sink in, watched it hurt, watched her fear. Seeing that was worse than the pain from his no-longer-numb left shoulder. He had to consciously relax his jaw.

This was all too much for any person to absorb at one time. Casey knew that. So he hadn’t approached her after shooting the bastard who’d held the gun to her head; he’d just watched out of his peripheral vision while Chuck did what John wanted to. She didn’t keel over, she didn’t lose it – he’d half-expected some form of hysterics, but though she came close it didn’t happen. Tough stuff, Ellie Bartowski. 

He quickly squelched the sensation of pride that rose from his gut. She wasn’t his. Now more than ever, that was an outlandish idea. A relationship with a spy couldn’t be what Ellie wanted out of life. Thanks to Devon, John knew how she felt about people she cared for involving themselves in life-risking activities. Well, he risked his life _for_ a living. So it was pretty clear where they were going: nowhere. He ignored the way his chest tightened at the thought, and he pretended to ignore her. For now.

But as he covertly watched her absorb the truth (the parts of it that Sarah allowed) about her brother, and saw the worry and concern play over her features, he also came to the realization – partly because of that tight feeling in his chest – that he couldn’t wimp out without a fight. Every fiber of his character rejected that idea. And now that Woodcomb was out of the picture, it would be a just fight. He wanted to give her – give himself – give _them,_ dammit - a shot. One try. Even though it went against policy, even though spies weren’t supposed to form attachments, and even though he knew there was not a chance in hell. 

Ellie stood from her seat to face her brother and roughly reprimand him for keeping secrets and putting himself into harm’s way; but in her gestures and expression were all the familial care and concern that John had come to expect from her. That was what Ellie Bartowski was all about – caring. Especially for her family. 

And that was, very suddenly and very fiercely, what John wanted. So even though he couldn’t get out of his head the image of her hands raised before his own gun, and even though hard anger still curled his innards into knots at the memory of the bastard Fulcrum agent’s revolver pushed up against her forehead ... even though he knew it was completely pointless, he was going to try. Later – when she’d had a chance to absorb it all, when she’d gotten some perspective – he was going to make a try for her. Once. 

And then he’d walk away. 

Ellie lost some of her numbness and a lot of her jitters as Chuck told his story – his insane, incredible, but patently authentic story - in characteristic disjointed fashion, with occasional guidance from Sarah. John contributed nothing, occupying himself with keeping an eye on the two living members of the crew that had broken into the house. 

Ellie couldn’t help noticing that John’s attention seemed to be everywhere but on her.

So he was a hero. A _big_ damn hero, Major John Casey, every day of his life. Her last remaining valid reason to not want a relationship with him crumbled away, to be replaced by gloom, because any evidence that he might want her was gone, too. 

She forced herself to face the possibility that his attraction to her had just been a part of his cover. But after about ten seconds, she gave it up. She couldn’t make herself believe that all that smoldering heat had been feigned. So, what was it, then? She was confused. Given the morning’s events, now was probably not the time to be trying to figure out another person’s feelings toward her. But she was having difficulty redirecting her thoughts.

It wasn’t long before the clean-up crew … the sweepers … whatever they were, Ellie couldn’t remember the spy-speak label Sarah had used … arrived. They carted off the body and the two living men, somehow had the bloodstain gone from the courtyard in a matter of minutes and even mopped up the coffee spill inside her front door that had been pretty low on Ellie’s list of priorities. One of the crew stopped at Sarah’s elbow with a nod in Ellie’s direction and said something not meant for Ellie’s ears. Ellie sat up straight from where she’d been wearily leaning against the couch back.

Sarah replied with words that were inaudible to Ellie, but short and stern. The man left.

“What was that about?” Ellie demanded. Because whatever it was had definitely been about her.

“Never mind,” Sarah said hastily. Ellie parted her lips to press the issue. John’s voice pulled her up short.

“Just tell her.” His voice was low and rough. He was standing behind Ellie’s couch; when she turned her head, she saw he was in his classic guard position, feet shoulder-width apart, spine soldier-straight, arms folded – though the right arm was clearly supporting the injured left. Well, now she knew where _that_ came from. That guarding posture was real, as real as the gun he currently wore openly. Should she be distressed that now, knowing he actually _was_ responsible for the safety of a large number of people, her heart curled tightly around the image of his on-guard stance and refused to let it go? Probably she should, but she decided rashly that that was just too bad. Whatever he was feeling, her own emotions toward him were the same. 

Except stronger, maybe. Which was going to be a problem. Ellie stifled a groan.

“Ellie.” Sarah was evidently nominated to deliver the bad news, whatever it was. Ellie felt a need to be on the defensive, and so stood with her arms akimbo. She was pleased to find her legs were steady.

“This isn’t information you were supposed to ever have. Now that you do, you’re a liability. To us, to the mission, and to Chuck. You’re going to be … of concern, to the CIA, the NSA, Fulcrom, and others. It’s not a tenable situation, as things stand.”

Ellie squinted at her irritably. What was the girl trying to say?

“Spit it out, Walker,” John snapped from behind Ellie, giving voice to her thoughts.

“We have to discuss this with General Beckman,” Sarah snapped right back. Ellie felt a grudging amusement and respect, that she didn’t let her partner just bulldoze over her. “We can work something out.”

“Like what?” John grunted, moving around to the front of the couch until he was facing Ellie, and meeting her eyes for the first time since saving her life. Their impact sliced at her soul like lasers, painfully, and Ellie swallowed. It wasn’t any easier to hear what he said than it was to meet his eyes. “You’re going to have to be handled so as to minimize the danger you present to this team and to national security.”

_I’m a threat to national security._ Ellie felt a bubble of highly inappropriate laughter welling in her throat and swallowed again to keep it down.

“Relocation to a secure facility for an indefinite amount of time is most likely,” John finished, “for both of you.” Short and sweet and to the point, that was John. Or whatever he was really called.

“What, no memory wiping drugs?” Ellie muttered sarcastically. John met her gaze squarely. 

“They’re generally unsuccessful when the knowledge the subject possesses is tied to strong emotion, as it is in your case, since a close family member is involved.”

_Oh._ Ellie rubbed her palm over her eyes, not bothering to explain that she’d spoken facetiously, thinking such drugs were no more than science fiction. John knew that, and was doing what he could to orient her to the truth – the harsh truth – about her new situation by treating the question seriously. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.

And she was oddly grateful for the respect his action paid her intellect and her character, in that it revealed his expectation that she would be able to handle the truth. Memory-wiping drugs existed. Chuck Bartowski was a government spy. John Casey killed people. 

John Casey saved people.

Chuck, apparently, didn’t have quite the same amount of respect. “We have to talk to General Beckman first,” he insisted. “We can figure something else out.”

John eyed him sideways. “And if not, you’ll what? Threaten to quit?”  
  


Chuck pulled his shoulders back and met John’s eyes, managing only to look awkward and out of his depth. When he spoke, though, there was a steely certainty in his voice that Ellie hadn’t heard in … ever. She watched her brother’s face. There were definitely depths to him she hadn’t suspected. She’d hoped to see him grow as a person. She wasn’t sure she liked the way he appeared to have done it.

“Castle,” John finally barked, breaking eye contact with Chuck and ceding something – Ellie didn’t know what. He headed out the door without further ado, still favoring that arm, leaving Chuck to collect Ellie at Sarah’s direction and herd her along. 

“Where are we going?” she demanded. Chuck flashed a grin over his shoulder, the first she’d seen from him today. Ridiculously, it lifted her spirits.

“Secret spy base,” he returned in a deep, phony television announcer’s voice. Ellie rolled her eyes.

He hadn’t been kidding, though. They blindfolded her – _blindfolded_ her, like they were in some B-rated spy movie – and told her it was for her own protection. And it worked; she found after the ride that she couldn’t later direct anyone to the secret spy base, even under torture. She stared around at the gleaming high-tech surfaces of the facility as they stowed her behind a see-through door. She put her hand on its jamb before it swung shut, causing Casey, who’d been in the act of closing it, to pause.

“I’m a doctor, you know,” she asserted, trying to ignore how her heart leapt whenever she caught his attention, frowning face or no. “Keeping secrets is part of my job, and the last thing in the world that I would want to do is endanger my brother or, or y- you.” She’d been thinking of him and Sarah both, the pair, but it came out sounding differently and she paused at that unintended confession. His eyebrow twitched; she rushed on, not giving him a chance to say anything. “You don’t have to put me under lock and key – I just won’t tell anyone anything. No talking about what I’ve seen, or what you’ve told me today.”

John’s expression morphed into something very still. “The thing about torture, Ellie,” he told her, his voice low and almost gentle, “eventually, everyone talks.”

He stood there for a moment, watching her absorb that. She had no words, and he dipped his chin. Once by one he lifted her fingers from the jamb, and then closed the door carefully. He left her standing there, enclosed, rubbing her thumb over the fingers he’d touched.

She could see the three of them, Chuck, Sarah, and Casey, but not hear them as they conducted the meeting with General Whoever. Sarah did much of the talking, to begin with, while Chuck stood with his arms crossed and his face growing more and more unhappy. Ellie moved to sit in the single chair provided in her tiny clear-walled space. Her brother finally burst out determinedly, disregarding Sarah’s attempts to quell him, and began to talk rapidly. John never said anything; he just observed all from under a lowered brow, his right arm casually clasping his left, leaning back against a wall. That arm was getting more painful; Ellie could see it in the tightness of his posture whenever he shifted.

His attention was trained on Chuck’s interchange with the monitor that Ellie couldn't see. Frustrated by her forced inactivity and helplessness, she hopped up from her chair to pace around the little, call it what it was, cell. The motion drew John’s eyes; and before he could glance away again, Ellie stomped down the quiver of hopelessly mangled fear and attraction that the eye contact engendered to gesture at him. She put every ounce of imperious doctor-ness into the arm wave that she could; she might not be able to take part in the discussion of her own future, damn it, but there was one thing she could do very well. And it would give her something to think about besides relocation and lock down facilities. John looked away to Chuck and Sarah, and then with a rueful twist to his lips he levered his torso off the wall and came to her.


	15. Tended

“Get in here,” Ellie ordered John, and he raised one brow. Then, surprising her with his compliance, he unlocked the clear door and moved inside. The instant he was in, Ellie realized her mistake – he took up so much room in the small space, and what felt like all the air. But she’d rather deal with that than with how she’d felt when he was ignoring her. Taking a deep breath, she gestured him into the chair she’d vacated. “You injured that arm,” she said brusquely. “Let me look at it.”

The skin around John’s left eye crinkled as he squinted it at her. She firmed her lips and glared at him. She’d dealt with recalcitrant patients before – violent patients, patients in DTs or high on any variety of street drugs, patients just plain off-their-rocker psycho. “I once wrestled a three-hundred-pound meth head to the floor,” she told him sternly, ignoring how her heart was pounding with his nearness as well as the fact that it had been a whole team, nurses and security besides herself, who’d gotten that particular patient down. John didn’t need to know either of those things.

‘Need-to-know’, hah. How nice to usurp one of his spy-phrases.

“What about need-to-know?” Now both laser-blue eyes were squinting at her. Damn, she’d said that out loud? She had thought she’d conquered that little problem.

“Nothing, not important. Now I’m going to assess that arm, so don’t give me any back-talk.” Back-talk? She heard herself with amazement, even as both his eyebrows flew up. It wasn’t back talk that she feared, it was the gun he wore! And all the things she was certain his finely toned body was capable of even without that weapon.

Maybe especially without that weapon. She’d experienced the signature work of those lips, for example, and those large blocky wonderful hands ...

Oh, for crying out loud. Hormones – down! If ever there was an inappropriate place or time ...

Casey stared down at her with an unreadable expression, and then he sat. Ellie nodded in satisfaction, trying to ignore the irrelevant fact that his physical proximity was creating sparks which threatened her nerve endings. A medical assessment was just the thing to get her mind off ... things. This was what she did, after all – figure out the problem, and fix it. Despite her surroundings, the routine was as familiar as breathing.

“Shirt off,” she commanded. His chin lifted at that. She pursed her lips and kept her face stern. This time, John’s mouth bent in what looked like amusement to Ellie. Pleased to have broken that expressionless façade, she waited patiently.

Finally, he shook his head resignedly and pulled the edge of his black T-shirt up. He only got so far, though, before running into trouble; the left arm just wasn’t cooperating. Ellie moved in to help, a little belatedly due to the clenching of her abdominal muscles in reaction to the sight of his finely sculpted ones. “Good arm out first,” she told him, maneuvering the material up over his working shoulder and then his head. Beneath every incidental touch of her fingers, his skin was warm and smooth over hard muscles that moved with clean orchestration. Ellie swallowed as she carefully pulled the left arm out of its sleeve and dropped the shirt to the floor. The nearness and maleness of him were again causing her hormones to rise up, in revolution against her fear. How was that possible, after all the craziness she’d been through this morning? _Besides that, right now he’s a patient - and you’ve worked on attractive ones before._ Which she had. Just never one she was this attracted to.

Of course, she’d never been quite this attracted to, well, anyone. She cleared her throat. _Focus_. She turned her attention to the injury at hand. The tissue around the shoulder socket was swollen and beginning to bruise; impact trauma, she judged.

“Make a fist,” she told John, and frowned when he couldn’t. He couldn’t fully rotate the arm, either, though he turned white with the effort. She palpated the area. He didn’t make a sound, but she saw his teeth grit together.

“This is dislocated,” she told him.

He nodded. “I figured.”

“How you were able to use two hands to ...” Ellie’s voice tapered off as for the dozenth time the image flashed through her brain, of him standing with his gun up just after shooting her hostage-taker dead.

John knew where her thoughts were. “Adrenaline,” he answered shortly. “A body will do surprising things given the right motivation.” His eyelids shuttered.

Ellie stared at him, caught in his expression. There was something there, in the tight jaw and hard eyes ... something edgy but, she thought, covertly vulnerable that stole her breath. She parted her lips.

“What motivation?” Her voice wouldn’t come out at any more volume than a whisper.

John met her gaze solidly, his brow furrowed and his lids crinkled in a look she didn’t understand. “Fear,” he answered, gruff and low.

Fear. The single word didn’t mean anything to her, at first. But then Ellie was the one to look away from him. Fear for her, he meant? Fear so strong that it impeded the pain impulse and gave him the use of an unusable arm in order to kill what threatened her?

There was welling warmth in her chest and hot wetness forming in the corners of her eyelids, surprising her. She blinked against both and cleared her throat with an effort. _You’re just a little shocky. Business. Focus._ “I could help you with that,” she said huskily, with a nod at his shoulder, “but I don’t expect you have any pain meds in this place.”

“Pain meds ... no.” The way he said it made her wonder what kinds of drugs they did store in here, because clearly, there was something.

Well, memory-wiping ones surely seemed likely, now, didn’t they?

“Let’s just do it.” John’s tone was commanding, causing Ellie to cross her arms and roll her eyes at him. This made his lips quirk again, enough to crinkle the skin around his eyes in that sexy way he had. It made her yearn to lay hands on him and do some very non-doctorly things. It was simply wrong, Ellie groused mentally, for a man to look that good when he was injured, and sitting there half-smirking at her.

“This isn’t some stupid action movie where the hero runs his arm into a post and pops everything back into place, with a little bit of pain but no problem,” she admonished. “In real life, reducing a dislocated bone hurts, and it’ll still be tender for a few days after. That’s when it’s a simple dislocation – you’ve got all this impact damage to the tissue to deal with, as well.”

“I’ve dislocated it before, I know what to expect,” John returned.

“All right then,” Ellie nodded efficiently. She’d done her job informing him; it was his decision. “It’s pretty simple. You’re just going to move your right hand back over your right shoulder with your elbow out, like you’re about to pitch a baseball, but slowly and steadily.” She reached for his right fist to guide him through the maneuver. Now touching him, she became cognizant of his line of sight while he was seated and she was standing in front of him. Parts of her contracted in reaction. _Stop that and concentrate_ , she reprimanded herself. _Reducing an anterior dislocation, that’s what we’re doing here. Ignore everything else. Ignore the lovely expanse of his chest._ She needed to ignore the beautiful way the muscles of his arms shifted, crying out for her to put her hands on them. Ignore how she could sense his body heat as if he were a furnace and she an empty, cold house needing to be warmed.

John was frowning, and though her heart rate was high from her mental meanderings, Ellie yanked her attention to what she was doing. While her thoughts strayed, the fingers of her hand bracing his bad shoulder had wrapped too tightly around his clavicle. She loosened them, hoping he didn’t see the way her cheeks flushed. Then she remembered who he was. _He makes observations for a living, you idiot. He probably knows every thought going through your head._ Including her current, escalating desire to wrap as much of herself around him as she could and not let go.

John was regulating his breaths well, drawing each one in slow and deep. Ellie’s fingers tightened again on his shoulder as with satisfaction she felt the head of the humerus move into the glennoid and correctly socket itself home. Air moved over John’s vocal chords in something that wasn’t quite a growl, and he relaxed beneath her hands.

“There we go,” Ellie murmured, her voice calm and professional. “How does that feel?” On his shoulder, her fingers spread out to unkink themselves, rubbing across his skin.

“Better,” he answered. He lowered his right hand from behind his head with Ellie’s still wrapped around it – well, as far around it as possible. While completely proportionate to the rest of him, his hands were so big. There were calluses here and there, and she now knew that those were from many many hours spent holding a gun. She’d seen the precision with which he could shoot, and imagined it took a lot of practice to get that good.

“Pretty good right now, actually,” John spoke again, his voice turned grating. His head was cocked wryly to the side. Ellie realized with a fresh rush of blood to her face that she’d been – well, _caressing_ the hand that she was considering. Her fingers straightened and stiffened as though she’d been electrified, but she was kept from moving away by the hand she’d been holding. John’s blunt-tipped fingers curled up over hers, wholly encapsulating them. 

His were rough and warm and she stilled. After all, she didn’t want to get away, and if he was going to hold her, any part of her ... that was what she did want. Very much. She tried to swallow, staring down at the top of his head as he turned it toward their joined hands. He cleared his throat, but if anything, his voice came out even more gravelly than before.

“Ellie.”

She opened her mouth to respond somehow, but before she got any words out he moved from sitting to standing. She’d been close to the chair, and now found her nose literally brushing his naked chest. Her heart rate spurted. She levered her head back preparatory to tipping it up to see him, but before she could he’d run his good hand into her hair and cupped her skull, surrounding it with warmth. He tilted her face up himself, and held her there, one forearm bracketing her shoulders, swamping her remaining uncertainties with his heat and power and integrity. She met the questions in his intense eyes fiercely, willing him to read her heart in hers.

Maybe he did, because his grasp on her tightened and his eyelids dropped to half-mast. Both her hands were free, and so she occupied them by lifting them to the magnificently naked shoulders spread before her. His respirations were deep and irregular; at her touch he let out a long breath that rumbled. She ran her fingers over his scapula, being careful of the bruised one, but on the right letting them dig in; first caressingly, and then demandingly. He dropped his head to hers with a full-throated growl at that, echoing the depth of her wanting.

Both sets of eyes were open when, with an achingly slow firmness, his lips molded themselves over hers. No light brush, no tentative touch this. It was certain and deep, a tandem movement that stirred the flickering sparks between them into a fire. Ellie’s nerve endings caught and burned wherever John touched her. When his tongue moved out to dampen her upper lip, she gasped at the sweet ache of desire that furled through her. She tilted her chin further to capture that tongue with her open mouth, and when it slipped over her teeth she keened quietly and went up on her toes to reach him better.

Heat spread from her nerves to her veins as she increased their points of contact, seeking him out with her hands and forearms, elbows, knees, even shins. Her clothed chest met his bare one, then pressed when he lowered his right arm to clasp her and pull her flush against him. Now everything touched, lips and tongues, hands arms and torsos, thighs – and it was inflaming and yet not enough. Ellie molded both her hands on his back, reveling in the lack of his shirt because it let her touch all that naked skin as she’d been fantasizing.

She skimmed her palms up along his spine, delighting in the sensation his muscles created as they moved – for he was touching her, too, his mouth moving on hers and his left hand moving slowly, carefully with that arm's injury to trace her waist while his right clenched the fabric of her button-down shirt into a fist. That lifted its hem so that, at her waist, he found bare skin too. Ellie shuddered. He tilted to kiss her neck; panting, Ellie dropped her head back to give him better access. He rumbled something unintelligible and leaned her further, back over his supporting, uninjured arm, then bent over her to mouth and even suck on her skin. At the first touch of his tongue there, Ellie’s nails bit without volition into John’s back. He growled against her, sending vibrations through to the soles of her feet and causing her toes to curl under.

He was holding her literally single-handedly and without difficulty, the muscles of that supporting arm flexed and firm beneath her back while those under her nails slipped and slid like well-oiled machinery. She was surrounded by power when John held her, Ellie thought fuzzily, while his hot hard mouth moved back to hers as if pulled by gravitational force. But it was orchestrated, controlled power – harnessed strength, strength she knew without a doubt he would only ever use to protect her, to help her, to support her. And that was what made him So. Damn. Sexy.

She became cognizant of John’s lips moving in a way that wasn’t kissing. No, that was a smile; and he tipped his head back just slightly from hers, without letting an inch of space between them otherwise. “Are you talking while I kiss you?” he asked in a bemused tone.

Ellie frowned, or thought she did – most of her muscles seemed to have turned to melted puddles, liquefied by his heat. “Maybe,” she admitted, and she felt herself flush, though it probably wasn’t noticeable to John given her overall excited state. Her voice came out in a croak.

“What could you possibly have to say that’s so important that it couldn’t wait a few min- a little- a good, long while?”

Ellie giggled, feeling giddy. She was light-headed, likely from how rapidly she was taking breaths. If John wasn’t holding her, she doubted she’d have been standing.

“Just my thoughts out loud,” she told him honestly. “A problem I’ve had around you for awhile, you may have noticed.”

He snorted, and quirked a grin at her. “Yeah. All right, get it out. What were you saying?”

Right. Well, why not? It wasn’t like he didn’t know. Ellie shook her head ruefully. “I was saying ...” she moved, sliding her hands up his spine and then his neck to frame his square jaw. Her voice grew almost as gravelly as his could be. “ _So_ damn sexy.”

His eyebrows had a small seizure, and instead of a snort, this time John let out a full-blown laugh. The banked fire in his eyes flared, and he moved his mouth to mutter into her ear. “You and me? Understatement of the year.”

He reached for her hair – Ellie could feel that it had become rather rumpled under his recent ministrations – and tugged out a few tangles. “That all you needed to say?” he demanded.

Ellie bit her lip. “Essentia-” but his lips were back on hers without giving her a chance to finish the word. Before she could do more than return the pressure, though, John had tilted his head away again. Frustrated to keep losing his mouth, Ellie frowned; but John tipped his forehead over her shoulder at something behind her. When she turned her head, she blanched. On the other side of that clear door stood two people she’d managed to completely and utterly forget about in the past heated minutes; Sarah and Chuck.


	16. Bold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, folks! Thanks for reading.

Sarah’s eyes were huge. She was biting her lips, and her gaze slid between the spectacle in the cell – her partner John Casey, wrapped amorously around an asset’s sister – and said asset, Chuck. With her hand on Chuck’s shoulder, the blonde was murmuring “it’s OK, it’s OK” over and over in a distinctly worried tone.

Chuck’s eyes weren’t visible, because he’d clamped a forearm across them. Behind it, his head shook back and forth. “No it isn’t!” he burst out. “I don’t know _what_ it ... it ... _that_ is, but it’s definitely NOT OK!”

Ellie was able to sense in her own chest the growl that rumbled through John. Despite the quivery feelings it gave her, she pushed against his torso. He slowly turned her loose, while glaring over her head at her brother. If Chuck had been looking, Ellie was certain he would have been truly intimidated. For her part, it was just endearing. She brushed her hand along John’s shoulder caressingly, thrilled to be able to do so, and thrilled even more that it seemed to settle him a bit. 

Sarah formed her features into a pointedly bland expression, and took a step to unlock the cell door. Sensing her movement, Chuck grasped one-handed at her, still keeping his eyes covered. “No,” he blurted, “don’t let them out. Don’t let them out until they promise to never, _ever_ , do that again.”

Sarah smiled at the absurdity of this. “Chuck,” she reasoned placatingly, “we can’t keep them in there until they promise to behave. They’re not small children.”

“Maybe not,” he asserted, “but they’ve been very, very, very” – his hand was batting at the air in between the ‘very’s, as though out of its thinness he could procure words strong enough to adequately portray his emotions, “ _very, very_ , bad.”

Sarah chuckled, patted his arm consolingly, and unlocked the cell door while he took his arm from over his face to glare at her. “Chuck talked the General out of relocating you,” she said to Ellie, apparently deciding to forego the knottier issue of kissing to deal with the comparatively simpler one of national security.

“He did?” John’s voice, from behind Ellie, sounded surprised. She edged a little hesitantly out into the larger room, and he followed her. Standing facing the other two, Ellie felt reality rushing at her and with it questions. Chief among them were, _what does this mean?_ and _now what?_ Both applied to more than one situation of import.

Chuck eyed the two of them through slitted lids. “I think it may be awhile before my eyesight returns,” he said conversationally to no one in particular. Ellie frowned in his direction but spoke to Sarah.

“What does that mean? I can keep my home? My job? My, my life?” 

“For the foreseeable future, yes.” Sarah’s focus moved over Ellie’s shoulder, to her partner’s face. From behind her where Sarah couldn’t see, Ellie felt John touch the small of her back with his knuckles and sweep his fingers slowly up and down. An undercover caress, conveying both comfort and congratulations. It was unexpected, sweet enough to choke her up. 

“Of course,” Sarah continued with an arched brow, “this means we’re even more entrenched here, since bringing in new agents for anything long-term might increase a civilian’s” – she tipped her head at Ellie, who realized belatedly that in this scenario she was the civilian – “knowledge of our personnel and the mission. Which could increase the danger quotient for everyone involved.” Though the agent had been addressing them all, Ellie knew her words up to that point were for the benefit of the _civilian_ , the only person present who wouldn’t already know the reasoning behind these precautions. Now, though, Sarah focused in on John. “Our duties expand, to protection of Ellie. It doesn’t look like that’ll bother you, much ...” she let her voice trail off suggestively. Ellie blushed. Behind her, John grunted – not an affirmation, and not a denial.

His hand was still on her back, though, and so her abdominal muscles were all tight and quivering. Was she ever going to get over this reaction to him?

“Chuck,” she said, trying to think about other things, rather more important things. “I don’t know how you did that, or, or ... I don’t know. But thank you.” She stepped forward – regrettably, away from John – to give her brother a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she whispered again into his ear.

He held her closely and just as fiercely. “Hey, it was for me too. I won’t do this without you. I want you safe, I want all of us safe, but” – he backed away, to stare at her. “You have to understand, this is only for as long as the situation is status quo. Anything changes, the deal changes. It’s all really very up in the air. And it means a lot of surveillance. You’ll see _lots_ more of Sarah and” – his face twisted momentarily- “Casey. There’ll be eyes on you at work, probably, and other stuff. And you can’t know details. What you know now, that’s it. Nothing more.” He searched her face worriedly. “Is that ... can you deal with that?”

Ellie took a deep breath, trying to take in what he was saying to her, and trying to be as brutally honest with him as he had just been with her. “I probably can’t understand well enough yet to know what it is you’re asking me to deal with. But if I can stay here, keep my life – if those are the conditions, so be it. I’ll take it for as long as I can get it. And thank you for it every day, if need be.”

“No, no need,” he returned hastily. His neck was red in that way he had when he got embarrassed. Ellie was cheered by this sign that in some ways he was still her awkward, endearing little brother. “But,” he continued in a more aggressive tone, “how about instead of saying ‘thanks’ every day, you just agree to never do ... _that_ ” – he waved vaguely toward the cell she and John had recently exited, as though even looking that direction again was too traumatic – “with _him_. Ever. For as long as we both shall live.” He frowned fiercely at her, ignoring her rolled eyes. “PROMISE me, Ellie.” He waited expectantly. 

Ellie’s fists found her hips as her gratitude toward Chuck swiftly waned. He was putting her in an unfeasible situation. There was no possible response she could make to his foolishness that wouldn’t be either a lie, obvious and weak hedging, or an open declaration that she absolutely wanted to do _that_ again. With no one else but John. Over and over again. 

It was maybe time for such a declaration, but she didn’t want to make it in front of her brother and Sarah and who knew how many surveillance cameras.

Oh, gods, surveillance cameras. Ellie was suddenly the one turning red as she remembered what she’d recently been up to in front of them. Would that General person see –

A hard muscled arm suddenly slid firmly around her waist, startling her. John stood just behind her, curving his knuckles territorially over her hip. The mortified flow Ellie’s thoughts had been following halted abruptly in a heated puddle. She let him step up against her body, delighting in the solid feel of him at her back. Chuck’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to decry this action, but he was forestalled.

“Nice job with the General,” John said over Ellie’s head. There was warning in his tone. “Probably want to quit while you’re ahead.” His other, good arm came across her chest to hold her shoulder. It was all very alpha male and proprietary; he was staking a claim. That spilled a thrill through to Ellie’s heart even as she frowned; she had a vague sense that as a strong, independent woman she wasn’t supposed to allow claim-staking. But he felt so good, there against her spine and surrounding her ... and then he spoke again and alleviated any need for objection.

“Anything else,” he said with a quick constriction of his good arm that squeezed away her breath, while heating her loins, “is up to Ellie.” He dropped both his arms and let her go, every bit as suddenly as he’d encompassed her.

Ellie wanted him back. _Up to Ellie_. What lovely, lovely words ...

He’d turned away and was talking to Sarah, all business. Well, almost. Ellie took a few seconds to try to glare her brother into submission, because he was still vocally protesting. 

“Ellie,” he started, and she interrupted before he could get farther.

“Exactly what John said, Chuck. This is my decision, and John’s. He’s a good, strong man with an important job, a sense of humor, and integrity. He’ll treat me well. Unless you know something to the contrary, I don’t want to hear it.”

Chuck looked at her through eyes that were still narrowed. His gaze turned to where John and Sarah were talking, and then he tipped his head in the other direction, away from them. Disgruntled, Ellie nevertheless followed him.

“Look, Ellie,” he said in a low voice, his face a picture of stressed bemusement. “If the facts that he’s gruff, grumpy, and a government spy don’t make you think twice, you need to know this. A, uugh, a-a thing, a _relationship_ with a mark, or anyone tangentially involved in his mission, is a conflict of interest for Casey. The NSA won’t look favorably on that. If General Beckman finds out …” he let his voice taper off, tilting his forehead forward significantly.

Ellie frowned while she crossed her arms. She felt that the day had been crazy enough that she could reasonably be excused from logical thought for the rest of it. However, the solution to this problem seemed quite clear.

“Who’s going to tell him?”

“Uh – tell who what?”   
  


Ellie pressed her lips together in exasperation. “Your general. Who’s going to tell him anything about, about,” she waved a hand from herself to John, now the one unable to put words to her meaning, “ _this_.” She hesitated at the word ‘relationship’ because the two of them hadn’t talked, yet, at all. John’s actions a few minutes ago, though, certainly implied that he meant to go there. That thought brought … well. Perhaps it was best just now not to consider the physical and emotional excitement that thought gave her. “I understand about conflict of interest, but in this case, I’m certainly not going to say anything. Are you?” She bit the last words out forcefully.

Chuck’s brow was furrowed as he stared at her in consternation. “Her,” he said finally, more calmly.

  
“What?” Ellie snapped. Her day had been long, and she was at the end of her patience.

“General Beckman is a her – is a woman. A she.”

“Fine. Are you going to be informing _her_ , then?”

He actually considered it, she saw that in his face and his hunched posture. But then he straightened, reluctantly. “No,” he mumbled, crossing his arms petulantly.

“Good. And who sees the feed from the cameras in here?”  
  
“Just Sarah and Casey, unless it’s something that needs to be referred to in a mission report.” Now his expression was puzzled.

“Also good. And will Sarah feel compelled to inform on us?”

“I think that’ll depend on her assessment of how well he’s doing his job,” Chuck admitted grudgingly. 

“And if he does it well?”  
  
He uncrossed his arms to hold them up in a defense mode that was only half-feigned. “Yeesh, woman, you’d make a good interrogator, you’re relentless! All right, fine, if he’s able to perform his duties … it probably won’t be an issue.”  
  
“All right.” Ellie nodded her head, sharply. “Then _we_ don’t have an issue. Do we?” she demanded.

“Ellie …” 

She cut him off with a shake of her head. “I mean it, Chuck. This is my decision. Mine and John’s.” She turned determinedly from his disgruntled expression. As he shook his head, she moved her focus back where it wanted to be, anyway - to John.

“ ... needs to double-check the cleaning job at the house,” the agent was saying. He was striving for a no-nonsense tone, but Ellie was able to decipher that there was an ulterior motive in there somewhere. So was Sarah, apparently. Not trying very hard to hide a smirk, the female agent nodded. “You should definitely go do that, Casey. Take Ellie home while you’re at it, she looks like she needs some ... ah, rest. Chuck”- hastily, over his loud ‘No way!’, “you should come with me while I review the surveillance from earlier. See if you can, you know, make connections about any of that team.” 

Chuck frowned violently at her. “I’m not letting those two go off alone together,” he snapped. “Was I the only one who saw what they were up to in there?”

John caught Ellie’s attention and jerked his head to the stairway. While Chuck was distracted by his argument with Sarah, the two of them sidled around and were halfway to the exit before he noticed they were leaving. They slid up the stairs over his yelled protests, Ellie feeling like a naughty child escaping an angry parent. A giggle climbed in her throat, though it was stalled when John grabbed her arm and held out the blindfold she’d worn on the way here. Disgruntled, she accepted his hasty placement of it over her eyes; then she followed John’s leading out into warm sunlight and what felt like the SUV in which they’d arrived. Ellie wondered briefly how Chuck and Sarah were going to get home. 

The ride was silent, for which Ellie found herself thankful. It was fraught, she thought, but not so tense that she felt driven to break the quiet. John’s fingers drummed now and then on the steering wheel, but not impatiently; more contemplatively. Ellie leaned her head back and even let her eyes stay closed under the blindfold for a few moments. Sarah had been right, she was tired, but these few moments to just think were welcome.

When they parked and John turned off the engine, Ellie pulled off the blindfold. They exited the SUV and Ellie stood for a moment, relishing the sun and the fresh new-autumn air. Recalling how they’d escaped Chuck and his angry distress, she smiled, and then let out a giggle. It was good to laugh, after the emotional highs and lows of this day. Standing at the driver’s side door in the slanting rays of afternoon light, John stared at her over the top of the vehicle. Still smiling, she met his look from the passenger side. She felt warm and soft and fragile, and suspected that he saw all of that and more. The faint lines between his brows never went away, but a corner of his mouth tipped up. He leaned his right forearm on the SUV’s roof and his chin on his arm. He didn’t say anything; he just looked at her. 

His blue eyes were quiet, but watching them Ellie found that she could read them. They displayed enjoyment, which kicked her own smile up another notch. They were assessing, trying to read her emotions. There was even a slight question there, asking ... well, asking what she wanted. And they were approving, of her. Just of her in general.

Ellie forgot to breathe for a space of time. She parted her lips now and drew a deep one in, and it broke the spell; John clicked the SUV’s doors locked, and at the chirping sound she was able to look away, and then follow him into the courtyard.

Being back in her house was surreal. Ellie stood in her living room and looked around, remembering bound men and guns and swift, hard violence. All that was superseded in her sensibilities, though, by something infinitely more delicate – an unseen connection that she could feel tugging at her heart, binding her to the man who stalked silently into her kitchen and bent down, doing something with ... something. She followed him, watching, pulling up in the doorway. The something was something electronic, and he seemed to be powering it off. 

“Sensors,” he said shortly, straightening up. “I’m going to leave them here, but they’ll be off. For now.” He leaned against her counter where it cornered, a study in male magnetism.

Ellie nodded, paused in the doorway. She was pulled towards him by that tugging in her heart yet suddenly felt hesitant, here alone with him and the unspoken things between them. After all these months, this implicit – what? Desire? _Yes_. Intention? _Yes_. More? _Yes_ \- between them seemed so tentative, as if should she make one wrong move it would all snap, break perhaps irrevocably. She wanted to approach him, be near him, up against him, even _in_ him somehow – and he’d clearly left that her decision to make. He wasn’t going to make the move, this time. It had to be her. 

Swallowing, feeling more awkward than she ever had in her life, she put one foot in front of the other and moved into the kitchen, trailing her hand along the counter. He went preternaturally still, standing his ground and watching her advance. His eyes were intense; so intense that her steps faltered and then halted, and so he turned his head to glance in an ostentatiously business-like manner around her kitchen. Ellie felt her teeth biting at her lower lip and forced herself to stop that. The air felt heavy and thick between them, but she made herself move another step through it while John pretended nonchalance. He did it poorly. Not a nonchalant kind of guy, John Casey. 

His look snagged on an empty spot on the counter and he frowned.

“Where’s the microwave?”

Grateful for something inconsequential to focus on while she gathered her courage, Ellie pursed her lips and stared at that empty spot, too. Suddenly she chuckled, a small measure of the light-heartedness she’d felt on escaping from Chuck returning. 

“You know what’s ridiculous?” she asked, able to pace closer more easily while he was distracted. But then he returned his eyes to her and watched her drag her hands through her hair. The heaviness of the air between them returned, too.

“What?”

Ellie shook her head, managing a rueful smile. “I never even wanted us to have a microwave. They’re not healthy, you know, radiation and all that processed, warmed-up food.” He crooked his mouth up in a grin and again, she couldn’t move for a moment. 

“Ah, I forbade it, actually, but Devon begged and begged and so I finally let him bring his old one over.” She resumed walking toward him, determinedly. He lifted one hand to place it, casually, on the same counter she was sliding hers over. “An- and then”, she stuttered, only a few steps away from him now, “when it conked out, we’d been ... well, he’d been so distant, and I wanted to ... I don’t know.” She shrugged one shoulder, a ‘what-can-you-do’ gesture. She was proud to have gotten out that many sentences that actually made sense. He looked so good, leaning on her counter and bringing more flashbacks, this time of that long-ago day when he came over to fix the microwave about which she was babbling. She was very near him now. She could feel the heat rising from his body. 

John’s chuckle was low, and the sound dragged over her sensitized nerve endings like aural sex, making her draw in a ragged breath. “Well,” he said. He shifted his weight from one leg to another in a move that drew her attention to parts of him that she really shouldn’t focus on if she wanted to remain rational in any sense of the word. Ellie stopped moving, her left hand having slid on the counter top to within an inch of his. She couldn’t go forward any further without standing on his toes. “All I have to say,” John continued, his voice decidedly rougher than it had been a moment ago, “is God bless Devon and his microwave.” 

As he said the last word, it cracked, because Ellie glided her hand palm-down over the top of his. John let his eyes fall closed, for just a moment, and apparently that was all he needed from her. He tilted his head down to see his palm shift around to meet hers. Her fingers had to stretch apart to fit his between them, and she watched their tandem motion with her heart quickening at the weightiness and simplicity of it. He curled his fingers around to capture her, tightly. 

“You up for this?” he rasped down at her. Ellie tilted back to stare at him determinedly.

“Look, I know it’s not going to be easy. I even know that I don’t know how not-easy it’s going to be. But I”- her voice caught. She cleared it and plunged on. “I want this.” Her words were fading to a whisper, so maybe that was why his head was getting closer to hers. “I want _you_ , John.”

His forehead was just a few centimeters away now. Ellie’s free hand came to his chest and surfed over his t-shirt, cresting his ribcage, then around to his back. 

“I don’t know when or where I’m going next,” he said, one final fair warning. 

Ellie nodded. “I know.” She curled fingers that trembled a little into the back of his t-shirt, while repeating an earlier sentiment. “I want as much of you as I can get, for as long as I can get it.”

She had him. Her heart soared in triumph. She had just enough time to see his eyes flare with heat before she cupped her palm to his head and pulled his lips into hers. He let out a short hoarse laugh, and she captured it demandingly with her mouth. Deep, sweet, and strong, he took over then, slanted his lips on hers, and sought her tongue with his. The hand of the arm that surely still hurt skimmed down her side and around her waist; the other clamped over her shoulders to crush her into his chest. She returned the pressure eagerly as he pivoted them ninety degrees so that the cupboards were at her back. 

In one swift move, he hooked the good arm beneath her and lifted her – one-armed, and a very primal part of her thrilled at that blatant display of masculine power – onto the countertop. His fingers flashed between them, undoing buttons; from her new height advantage Ellie watched his head dip as he set his mouth, hot and hard and wonderful, below the collar of her shirt. When he started to use his teeth, she had to lean into him for support; every vertebrae she had felt like it was turning to hot plasma. Her breath coming in harsh gasps, she wriggled her hips and maneuvered her legs until her thighs clasped his waist. He growled against her skin when she applied pressure to grind her pelvis up against him. 

Backing away slightly, he captured the start of her protest with his lips and muttered, “Bed. Or couch. Or something.” 

Nodding, willing to acquiesce to anything to get him to continue doing what he’d been doing, Ellie flung a hand over her shoulder at the couch. It was closer. John pulled her down off the counter, and half-carried, half-dragged her to it. By the time her knees bumped the cushion, Ellie was giggling. But the spurt of amusement was quickly drowned in the flood of sensation engendered by his hands and lips and teeth and other parts as they fell onto the couch.

A long time later, she rubbed her cheek indolently over the bare chest beneath her head. She tilted her face up; above her, John’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep – one hand was rubbing slow circles over her back.

“So,” she said into the quiet, “I’m still supposed to call you John?”

His eyes slid open lazily, but the gaze beneath them was as keen as ever. “Yes,” he told her.

“It’s your real name?” She squinted at him, assessing, wondering if he would tell her if it wasn’t. 

His eyes were quietly evaluating, too, as he focused them on her. “Now it is,” he said, and nothing more while she once more faced reality. “I’m Major John Casey.”

_ Major _ . That was information she hadn’t had before, and she nodded in appreciation of his bestowing it. It balanced out the other fact – that while he was telling her as much truth as he could, if he had another name she couldn’t know it.

That hurt. But it came with the package, and she’d already accepted the package. She _very much_ wanted to keep the package as long as possible. _So deal_ , she told herself sternly.

“Well this is just great.” When she spoke again it was in a determinedly lighter vein. “You’re not just the sexiest man I’ve ever known, you have a sexy job. How am I supposed to resist that?”

He grunted, and she could feel it rumble through his chest. Damn, the man could make even a grunt just as sexy as hell. “You’re not,” he growled in her ear. The sensation shortened her breath while making her want to somehow crawl inside his skin, to the place where all those delicious vibrations originated. 

Ellie relaxed back down onto him, but didn’t get a chance to recline there before he tensed beneath her and then flipped them over so that he was above her, staring down into her face. “Hey, watch your arm,” she warned.

“I’ll worry about the arm,” he returned. “You have other things to think about.”

“Oh yeah?” she challenged, grinning fiercely up at him. “Like what?”

“Well.” He dipped down to nip lightly at the corner of her mouth. “Like the fact that it’s about time for your genius-geek brother to be coming in.”

“Hmm.” That gave her pause for about two seconds, before his hand drifted down between them and hazed her thinking. “Well, as things stand right now,” her words momentarily paused as he moved his fingers and she gasped, “what he’d get would be a good view of _your_ backside.” 

She laughed, because now he was the one to halt. “Good point,” he admitted.

So the two of them moved the proceedings into her room, and Chuck’s eyesight was spared further damage when he did arrive home. Later that night, though, his hearing wasn’t.


End file.
